A drive back home - Abe Maslow Navigating, Me Driving.

Was dropping a friend home a few days back, she recently finished her graduation-post graduation rigmarole. So is officially now on the job-market, seeking gainful employment.

This particular friend is nice and sorts, but she is not one who is (I don’t know how to say this) evolved. You know?
I mean she is one who is comfortable and content with catching a movie, going to a discotheque. Not necessarily one who would philosophize, analyze or hypothesize on say an event, a movie, a piece of music or a book. But of course, she is talented and accomplished in her own way(s).

I mean she is more Sarat Chandra’s Rajlokhi than Kamal Lata.
More earthy than ethereal, more gut feeling than cerebral musings.

So at a traffic snarl, I asked her “So what you planning to do, now that your course is done?”

She: “I think the O&M job will happen”.
Me: “Okay that’s great then, I mean you couldn’t want better, in your line of work can you?”
She: “Yeah”
Me: “What you glum faced about, got a great job around the corner, getting married next year?”
(To fairly long time boyfriend I must add)
She: “Then what?”
Me: “Then what…meaning what? Good job, good money, happy married life. Kids. What else?”
She: “Is that it? What’s great in that? That can happen to everybody and anybody”

“Great” + “Woman”. I think Martina Navaratilova. I have this mental-map thing, a woman talks about “greatness”. She must want to be like Martina Navaratilova!

I mean the woman ruled the courts for decades in probably the Golden Era of Woman’s Tennis, made a comeback when everybody, from John Mc in the press box to the guy who sweeps the stands, had written her off. And second only to Billie Jean King by way of being the public face of the Women’s tennis movement. Yes there was Steffi Graf and Chris Evert, but they relegated themselves to star-invitees at the Grammies after they hung up their rackets. There were a couple of designer brands thrown in too. Brand Ambassador monkey business.

Okay, digression apart.
What my friend said, made me think
(a) Is greatness an attribute of “others”, men/women who we read/read about/see on TV, will we never appropriate “greatness” for ourselves?

(b) And ever since Abraham Maslow, decided to study human need/evolution/motivation patterns, and put all of us into convenient segments of his famous little triangle. We seem to be comfortably numb in the little psychological pigeonholes he placed us in, and you know what? We like it that way!

It helps us calibrate, our degree of association/attitude in regard to other people. He/She is a “Cretin or a Moron”, so I will talk to him about the English Premier League or even better Baywatch! He/She wouldn’t understand Chopin would he/she? I can get away with something sarcastic and nasty maybe, he/she wouldn’t dare retaliate!

Alternately, he/she is this outstanding creative genius, a classical musician or a poet or something like that; we would balk at the thought of talking to him/her about “Wet and wild”. Oh gees! No. We should talk Dali or Freud, shouldn’t we?
Its incumbent upon us to be in awe of him/her, kiss the very ground he/she walks on.

Hmmm…I did the pigeonhole thing for a moment there, she is more the “Rajlokhi”, and so a job and a family life should be enough for her? Makes more sense, eliminates the possibility of a paradox or a fallacy. Rounds of the digits, balances the equation.

A “starving artist” is a social oddity, remember? Someone from the other side of the tracks.

Bottom line - our own little subconscious/conscious pigeonholing and straightjacketing, makes us more comfortable, more secure, eliminates the unknown and the unexplained. Does not bring forth questions, to which we have no answers. Fits in neatly with the axioms and first principles, which govern OUR world.

Maybe that’s why, “WE” ...can never appropriate, far less attain ...“greatness”.