I Make No Allowances

There are those days under the sun when maybe, just maybe, at a certain level you do realize that you have lost. And yet admitting and verbalizing this loss at the hands of somebody, perhaps a shade better, becomes a tough ask. That is precisely when you wonder what is it that holds you from making this objective assessment of your own abilities. On the face of it, a task, which doesn’t seem to be such a Herculean task after all!!!
But almost akin to most men on the wrong side of fifty who find it hard to hold an erection and equally hard to admit it, our over-fed egos hardly permit such allowances. It would not be far from the truth if I said that, admitting that your competitor is better, is nothing short of bravado similar to that of a guy, who on the day of his marriage ends up muttering an ‘I do.’
To make matters worse, eliciting the admittance turns out to be a quantum more difficult if your tormentor incidentally happens to belong to the opposite sex. Now the case in point makes us ponder as to whether such a phenomena has anything to do with the vastly predominant social constructs we have learnt to live with. I suspect it does. More so, as our super-evolved and hyper-competitive society has increasingly taught us that our sole antidote against this venom of one-upmanship is, self-belief. However, often in our pursuit for the same, somewhere our muddled-up minds can no longer differentiate between being possessed by this false notion of self and self-belief. Ultimately leading us unto a make-believe world where even the most objective of our thoughts are heavily influenced by what we wish to believe about ourselves and nothing beyond mere figments of our imagination. The fundamental rule governing exclusive entry into this make-believe world of ours is perhaps that one needs to fundamentally uproot any cognizance of the fact that this world is nothing beyond a misconstrued defense mechanism. It is a defense mechanism, which in times of introspection we make use of just in order to continue to reel at the behest of a misplaced assessment of self. It is a mere support phenomenon, which withholds us from effecting actual improvement or even realizing further scope for improvement.
Now consider this, I chance upon this piece reading which, my feelings border upon tremendous appreciation, yet I find it extremely difficult to completely disregard this threat I am embroiled with. This is a threat, which challenge my bloated notions, hitherto oft fed by people around, about my flair for the written word. Now, this threat makes rather pressurizing demands on my self-esteem and requires me to revisit my assessment of my own potential in the light of the piece I have just read. However, benevolence is something as far removed from this assessment as largesse is from a marwari and all I am able to tell myself is that maybe, just maybe, this is as good as your best composition.

Yet again, I have lost out on a chance to enlighten myself to a loss and the existence of a superior practitioner of the art. In the process losing out on the possibility of learning from the peer and looking inwards. However, I do manage to distract myself by allowing myself to entertain thoughts about meeting up with this tormentor of mine, who happens to be a female and the way I see it, is oozing with what we politely refer to as sex appeal. This makes me wonder, can the written word so much as incite carnal thought even in the absence of a physical form. Must be true, I have never seen this ‘equal competitor’ of mine….