I inspire me. Really, I do. So do millions of people who need to get inspired. The only thing is, we think it is someone else out there, or we see an artwork of immaculate beauty, rendered to flawless perfection, which then makes us think that the artwork inspired us.
Right, and wrong!
Let’s take examples: I am a fitness freak. Before shooting a tranquilizer into your benumbed mind, I simply do not spring out of bed after I have eaten something edible, because my mind has coaxed me to work the hell out because you have eaten, so I better work the extra calories away. Firstly, that would be way too cumbersome, because you cannot do much when your body is sore and screaming for some reprieve. Secondly, unless you rest your body, your battered muscles cannot heal and repair themselves, because the cooling off is what gives the healthy feeling the next day. Thirdly, that would again be much too cumbersome [the working out] because I have just gorged on something edible. Let me just wallow in the aftertaste, can I? Â
Or I scour YouTube and come across someone whose video once again motivates me to try either a set of workouts that my body has been following regularly but has of late been missing the initial excitement, which would often fire me up in the beginning. On the other hand, maybe I am spoilt for choice at all the free content that lies just one tap and swipe either upwards or downwards.
Or my mind is confused, muddled, and clouded. Things simply appear to not work out the way they should. Then Pinterest pops up from some corner. Fortunately, it throws up a motivational quote on the screen. I then scour for more, and I read even more motivational quotes. Before you rip your hair out from its follicles, the incessant barrage of feel good quotes motivates me to such an extent, it now makes me circumspect whether Buddha, Confucius or the disillusioned and cranky spinster next door really said all that. In the end, I do nothing.
The question I should ask is: with all the motivation at hand, why do I do nothing?
You may hold me up at gun point, adamantly convinced that your little infant’s bland gibberish is actually a disguised code telling you subtly that your hardworking Lilliputian housemaid was actually Judas in her last lifetime. So, I either take you with a pinch of, well, salt or stare the housemaid down, wondering whether the thirty pieces of silver may have mushroomed into way more, inflation and all. Any which way, but it’s all up to me, isn’t it? To believe or not, huh?
So, who or what motivates me? I motivate me. As the rest of us really do so. Motivational quotes do just that: they motivate you with a quote. It is only you that can motivate you afterwards. The quote has done its bit. Now you do yours. Becoming dependent on motivational quotes make you dependent. Actually, the really old people are not dependent. Not at all. They got to that age not because a quote got to them but because they got to their own minds. If you really ask a centenarian about his secret to getting to such a ripe old age, he won’t spit fire and brimstone upon the merits of a quote that stuck like God Almighty to that thing he had long given up on, which in simpler words you could point out as his brain. His voice would tell you in a whisper something like this, with all the wisdom he has gained in the century that he has experienced: hard whisky and not whacking much. Not something like, MY BRAIN IS THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE. Most of us are constantly at war with our brains, and if the previous sentence holds water, then we are constantly at war with the universe. What good does that do to us? Unless, MY BRAIN IS THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE, AND I HAVE TOTALLY GIVEN UP ON IT. Now you have given up on everything. You have come to nothing. Zilch. Nada. Finito. Unless… you do something about it.
The thing about me is that I love me, but not in a narcissist sense. It’s a wholesome kind of love that I have for me. Of course, I read quotes, but only as a point of reference, and nothing more. For me, the truth within a motivational quote is not the be-all end-all summation of my life. My life is a dance of ironies, trivialities, and lofty dreams. Most often, the way I live my life spikes what little hair I have on my head straight upwards. Success and failure I take in stride. That’s what life is all about and is meant to be. Unless I stare my success down, I will not know when failure strikes. Unless I sneer at failure, because how much harder can your butt hurt when it’s down and out, I can look with pride at those finished works that I have labored with absolute, unrelenting passion, and hope when the time has come for me to showcase the fruits of my passion to the world, it can only bring success, unless it brings more failure. Unless… the law of the universe holds true. What goes up must come down. However, it swings both ways. Whatever you give, you get a hundred fold. Whatever you give when you have nothing, you get back a thousand fold. That’s why, I love me. I look at my reflection in the mirror and I get the jitters. That thing that looks back at me constantly reminds me: get down and strap your boots, goddamit! That’s me, motivating ME!
Even though, oftentimes, I walk out with either one of my boot’s shoelaces trailing on the ground.