We are the face of Narcissism

We tweet, we blog, we facebook, we bookmark, we are linked-in, we post ourselves on you-tube, we post our shots on Flickr,  it’s all about us and our seemingly fascinating lives that we want to share with the whole world! We think we are social media rock stars, and unknowingly, we have become the face of this narcissistic age.

What is narcissism? Dictionary.com defines it as, “an inordinate fascination with oneself,” or, “gratification derived from admiration of one's own attributes.”  

Our generation seems to fit this definition. Each of us seeks individualism, pseudo self-awareness, and confidence in our reasoning. We feel the need to honor the world with our frustrations, beliefs, and elite opinions. Nobody cares about what we ate, how little we slept, or how our boss mispronounced our name. But that’s the etiquette that we follow in the digital world, we acknowledge what we want, and respectfully move on in other cases. As much as I recognize the trend in others, I am guilty of it too. I post frequent updates on my facebook page because that’s my mode of communication with my friends who are scattered across the globe. 

Read a similar story titled Generation Me vs. You Revisited published by The New York Times. Here is an excerpt: “Conventional wisdom, supported by academic studies using the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, maintains that today’s young people — schooled in the church of self-esteem, vying for spots on reality television, promoting themselves on YouTube — are more narcissistic than their predecessors. Heck, they join Facebook groups like the Association for Justified Narcissism. A study released last year by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press dubbed Americans age 18 to 25 as the ‘Look at Me’ generation and reported that this group said that their top goals were fortune and fame.”

Now let’s think of how this narcissistic attitude will affect us in the long run. Will it hinder our personal relationships? We need to balance this prevailing behavior before it gets the better of us. Just a thought…

Pay it Forward!

This post is inspired by a movie I watched on the weekend called Pay it Forward. Released in 2000, this movie starring Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, and Haley Joel Osment, is about a 12 year old boy attempting to make the world a better place. The idea being, help 3 needy people, in turn they help 3 others and so on. Instead of returning the favor to the benefactor, the beneficiary pays the favor forward. It is a beautiful heart-warming idea set to change the world based on the principle of goodwill and faith.

What a revolutionary idea, don’t you think? I read somewhere that Benjamin Franklin first spoke of this concept, but I believe it has been conceptualized by Catherine Ryan Hyde in her novel Pay It Forward. The idea has been embraced by many students in schools and colleges across the world; it even has an active foundation set up. To get more info about the foundation click here. Or you could read The 365 Ways Blog about similar movements.  

It’s simple – we just twist the golden rule (ethic of reciprocity) to “Do unto others as you would have others do unto others.” If I should fall back on my cultural learnings of Dharma and Karma from the Bhagavad Gita, then it’s all about righteous duties, cause and effect, and selfless desires.  

Now I’m not suggesting that we stop living our crazy self-indulged lives and start remedying the world. I have to practice what I preach. And I know that work-related stress, lack of sleep, and personal problems often leave us in nasty moods. But every now and then, we could be nice? If we are fortunate enough (that we were helped) to pay a favor forward, well and good, if not, lets kick off the kind deed. As the day progresses, the favor goes around, and who knows, it could make a full circle back to you?

Step on it guys, pay it forward!

 

Celebrated Women

As I watch the Miss USA Pageant this evening, I write this post about women who are of completely different character. The women I write about are those who manage the only profitable investment firm in Iceland, while every other fostered debt 10 folds the size of its deposits.

The Miss USA Pageant is a 2 hour dedication to the blond and brunette beauties who are better off just smiling than reciting their rehearsed answers (like the response to the healthcare question!??). Instead, if we dedicated these 2 hours to Halla Tomasdottir and  Kristin Petursdottir  of Audur Capital, the women whose feminine intellect steered their clientele to profitable returns this year, don’t you think we would have learned a thing or two?

This brings me to discuss studies about raging testosterone on the trading floor, how it actually makes male traders assume greater risk than they should. Maybe testosterone plays a role in the irrational exuberance of the stock market bubble? Research shows that women made investment decisions may lead to more consistent profits for the clients. Women tend to focus on long-term results and more vested interests rather than short horizons. I’m not saying Lehman Sisters would have survived the credit crunch, but we are entering an epoch when women entrepreneurs and professionals are grabbing attention.

Hopefully this will be a lesson to the recruiters at investment banks and financial firms to welcome more women into the financial kingdom. We might be your saving grace! Cheers to the estrogen!

Inspiration: "The last bank standing" news video from CBS News

Incredible India

I like what they have done with the website. I think the information is useful and accurate. So anyone (new to India) who is considering travelling to the subcontinent, visit this website. I hope you enjoy your stay in my Incredible India!

The Wall Street Journal is currently featuring interesting articles about India. Click here to explore them. 

Be INSPIRED for your Decor challenges

I love to browse decorators' galleries for design inspirations. I have a collection of exotic ideas that I hope to use as inspiration to decorate my own home someday. Every space is a challenge in itself, but looking out for these ideas channel your creativity, don’t you think?

I don’t have any favorite designers, nor do I pay tribute to the elite work of expensive decorators. I usually make stops at Elle Décor (Metropolitan Home), Nate Berkus, Interior Design, HGTV, Decor & Style, Bravo's Top Design, and others. Recently, I stumbled upon Roxxn.com. The website is a compilation of interior design/décor ideas and hosts a collection of images from various sources. The reason I find it worth mentioning is because its archives are very vast and inspiring. With most other websites, you can view only the recent articles/images. But Roxxn.com has archived over 1000 (approx.) images. I thought I would share the link with my fellow enthusiasts. Make a stop if you need to add zing to your style.  

The Smell of Brewing Coffee

The aroma of freshly roasted, freshly ground, brewing coffee is unbeatable. If you’ve woken up to the smell of brewing coffee, you know the feeling! If you’ve walked past a Starbucks on a cold day, smelt the coffee filled air and felt the urge to step in, you know the feeling!  If you’ve starred aimlessly at your desktop all morning at work until the courteous coffee guy brewed a fresh pot of coffee, you know the feeling! If you've watched the continuous rain drops outside your bedroom window and felt nostalgic while holding that warm cup of coffee, you know the feeling! And if you've thought of the prospect of all your dreams coming true, while watching the steam from your coffee filter fog the air, you know the feeling!  

The lingering aroma does so much, it intoxicates – excites – awakens – jolts – energizes – de-stresses. (Just FYI: there is a scientific study that states that the smell of coffee helps sleep deprived animals feel awake and alert.) The smell of brewed coffee that engulfs the air outside the coffee shop is an inexpensive marketing gimmick. 1 out of 5 people are attracted to the smell and feel the impulse to grab a coffee on-the-go just from the passerby smell. I’m 1 of those 5 people for sure!

As The Cranberries rightly said, “Wake up and smell the coffee!”

It’s OK for Comedians to be racist, but not the Comedy Club, right?

I’ve seen many comedy acts, many live, some pre-recorded and others on YouTube. Almost always, the comedians throw in a racist joke, if not a whole segment dedicated to ethnic accents and taboo deeds of different cultures. To make my point, Chris Rock always makes fun of white people; Russell Peters always does the Asian accents and makes sexist comments; Anjelah Johnson is known for her Asian nail salon piece; and other guys like Larry the cable guy, Dane cook...

Now these guys are hilarious, I love them… I laugh and cry till my stomach hurts. Their chosen subject is often ‘racism’ but somehow I don’t seem to mind as much as I do when the comedy club itself is racist.

The other day, my friends and I visited a local comedy club on Friday night. We entered after the act had begun, but we were respectful and quiet. It was a mixed crowd of college students and older folks, and the comedian himself was OK, dry humor I would say. Every time the crowd broke into laughter, we did too. But every now and then we found something funny which was not in synchronization with the rest of the crowd. What do you do then? You laugh, cause its funny and you are there to amuse yourself! And every other table showed their own insensitive expression at different times. But our waiter was being a pain in the neck. He stood behind us and shooshed us continuously… until we were annoyed and decided to leave.

We got outside the show area and decided to speak to the manager about it. Of course we were being singled out… what right does the waiter have to ask us to not laugh in a comedy club?

(I am not mentioning the venue here, cause I don’t want to give the racist comedy club any more publicity – even if it’s bad. But I will say that in the following days, I made some angry calls to the club and voiced my opinion. I wrote some honest reviews on their website too. They eventually apologized. But I thought that it was an interesting paradox to write about.)

So yes, as unfortunate as it is, comedians can be racist, because they joke about stereotypical groups of people. But the comedy club that lets them perform should NOT.