#93. Pretension

We live in a world filled with portrayed realities, thanks to the realm of social media. Today, we try to dissect the term that causes us to get immediately turned off from people who possess this trait. I am talking about pretension. As usual, we will try to see if there is another way to perceive this facet of life.

Life’s like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending.

– Jim Henson

Anyone who knows me, I think will attest to the fact that I hate defining myself. I understand the irony of the preceding statement being a label in itself, but over the past few years, I have acknowledged that no matter how much I try, on certain occasions, I will deviate from my own definition of myself. With this awareness, it is hard to commit to saying with clarity: “Hey, I am <fill in a trait> kind of a person”.

Since I have already highlighted the irony, I will take an advantage of that fact today. I have come to acknowledge that I highly value authenticity in humans (and myself). And the older I grow, the more I find myself leaning towards genuine, authentic people over any other kind. I have seen this consistently, that I find it very difficult to even be around someone I know who possesses any degree of artificiality, sometimes to my own detriment.

Is that a sound stance to have? I don’t know. And a very conspicuous question is how do I differentiate between someone who is genuine vs. someone who is fake? Is there an empirical scale which helps us define whether someone possesses a quality, or are they just plain pretenders?

Anyway, simple extrapolation, some daydreaming as well as all these thoughts about self-definition, authenticity and artificiality sparked a thought in my mind.

How do we know exactly who we are?

What parameter decides whether we are brave or cowardly? Whether we are intelligent or dumb? Whether people like us or they don’t?

At least from the face of it, all these questions seem to be very subjective, and consequently in most situations, the answers for these questions are even more subjective. I’ll give you a “for instance”.

I have a friend with whom our entire group struggles. He doesn’t answer phone calls when we need him, he doesn’t act appropriately in social situations and does not respect the boundaries of any relationship. However, to his credit, his sense of humour is such that he could elicit laughter in the most bleak situations, and that is the sole reason we still hang out with him. He also has this uncanny ability to pretend to be the most sincere person when it truly matters.

Now, after reading this description of this friend, most of you would be wondering (as did I, admittedly), is humour such an important factor that it offsets all of his unreliable nature? Well, no. But as I said, it is a subjective matter, and resultantly, there cannot be a right or a wrong answer. Therefore, whenever all of us meet, it is a clinic of inappropriate jokes on which all of us laugh and he still continues to make his mark as a “good boy”.

So, what is the consensus? Should I classify this friend as good or bad? Obviously no one would have the answer, and frankly you might not care while reading this article about this guy. But I am sure that you have someone you are or have struggled with and have contemplated about in the past.

Generally, we take pretension to be a negatively connoted word. And don’t get me wrong, I do too. But what if we were to flip the script? What if, one were to pretend to have the right qualities in times that we need them to, whether or not they have those qualities generally? What if someone portrays composure in a situation that you know would infuriate them generally, but they maintain their stoicism till the tide passes?

Well, here is what I have come to understand.

When it truly matters, someone pretending to have a desired quality has the right to define themselves that way.

Let me elaborate.

I will take an imaginary person ‘A’, who is a meek, shy boy and stays away from conflict. However, in an instance where another boy, ‘B’, was being bullied, A stepped up and fought the bully off. In my humble opinion, A has all the right to define himself as brave, because he exhibited the quality when it made an impact.

If you stuck around this far, thank you for your time. If you enjoyed this, share this with one friend of yours whom you think will benefit from reading this. Thanks for reading, and I will see you in the next one. 🙂