🍀 REPUBLIC OF SELF - ISSUE 191
Hi, I am JOE and I write on "Mindful Productivity & Cerebral Happiness". My endeavour is to share life lessons, some thoughts, quotes & links to articles/podcasts/books, I discover during the week.
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During the week, I was thinking through one question that, perhaps more than any other, gets to the root of who we are and what motivates us.
Whatever might be our claims, no family ever gives its offspring unconditional love in practical sense; there is always, more or less subtle trade-offs, something that one has to do and to fit in a particular mould Or certain things that must at all costs be skirted / avoided.
However much of our attitudes and outlooks are shaped by our countries of birth – by being Indian, Cambodian, Britishers, American, Nordic, Southis or Israelis. Beside this, we are always first and foremost citizens of those micro republics we call families.
Each one of these lands equipped with a hugely idiosyncratic set of laws, expectations, patriotisms and tyrannies. Our nations may lend us a certain accent and civil code, our birth families tell us what constitutes a real man or woman, how much we can esteem ourselves, what we have to do to be admired and how much calm and fulfilment we deserve.
If auditing these conditions of acceptance matters, it is because to a far greater extent than we realise, they may still be in operation without making any sense at all.
Decades after, we have had left our micro republic homes, we may still be taking unconsciously an immense care for not to do too many things. Or probably, we’re still permanently trying to appease the bad moods of people in authority because we did the same in our past many decades ago. If we are still in the mood for questions, we may need to wonder two things:
1. How much am I still doing of what I had to do back then?
2. And how much do I like – or dislike – the laws of yesteryear?
We may find to our surprise that we are continuing to apply to the present a set of edicts that long ago ceased to align with any of our sincere aspirations. We continue to act and behave in a similar ways even when the republic of home has long been disbanded, its elite resigned and its borders obliterated…(..just to say it in a lighter way 😄).
We may need to take stock of the highly distinctive micro country of our own creation from the past, to which we are blissfully unaware. And in certain cases, before we waste yet more time on emigrating to the ‘Republic of Self’.
Take good care & enjoy reading this week's dose of ‘Mindful Productivity & Cerebral Happiness’.