New Beginnings...

The ZEBRA syndrome...

Not so long ago someone I know coined this phrase to a condition from which most of us suffer.

In this world that we are presently living in it is very difficult to stand apart, to be unique, to make a separate identity, to generate a USP of our own. The impediment? Well there are several impediments to the above efforts but one common one and probably the most important one ,that we ourselves are not aware of, thus making it the most critical one is "The Zebra syndrome".

So what is the zebra syndrome?

When we make desperate attempts to be different from each other little do we know that actually end up being very similar to each other. That is when you think that though you are unique in your own way, and you might be having different number of black and white stripes on our body but when I look at you, you will look to me no different than the other zebra standing beside you. In other words we end up being identical (almost identical) zebras.

The attempt to be different from each other and conscious efforts for the same are almost like a cliché. Overused and predictable. Not to mention superficial...

Why do we want to be so different from each other? Why do we get up everyday and don on our invisible armor as though that day is going to be a new battle, a war to prove that we are uniquely worthy? Why do we wait for people to move their pawns first as though life is a game of chess and then make our own calculated moves so that we make sure that we win. Little do we know that our moves are being monitored by someone else who is waiting to checkmate us too! Why do we play mind games? Why are we always trying to outwit each other in their game? Why can’t we simply go about our own work, trying to perform better than what we did yesterday?

Our attempt to be different from each other has in turn made us more  stiff and more clogged up in that space in our mind from where the creativity spurs. The thought process is no more a natural phenomenon, it is nothing but a reaction. Some call it competition, some call it survival, i call it the Zebra Syndrome.

Sit down and ask yourself how much of what you do is for yourself, to increase your self worth in your own eyes, to make yourself a better person, to make you feel happy about yourself rather than just another attempt to prove yourself in the eyes of the people who lets face it don’t really care cause they are so busy doing the same for themselves.

It’s a screwed up world. Being yourself has become more difficult than ever before but it is still the only hope, it is still the only cure to being afflicted with the Zebra syndrome.