A Saint from the Internet

 

I know many people have very low opinion of those who watch or enjoy ‘Bigg Boss’ TV show. But I happened to watch and follow last season’s beginning and later episodes and hence became well versed with it. If you followed it too, you would have found one participant of the show, his name was Afreen Khan if I remember correctly. He was introduced as a “life coach”. The producers of the show thought it was worthwhile to explain to the audience what a “life coach” does, and hence they consumed many hours around the same theme. Luckily, I had come across one such man claiming to be “life coach” on the internet before this Bigg Boss happened, and hence I was aware of it.

I had happened to find one “life coach” on the internet. Initially I had mistaken him for another man I used to follow many years ago on Orkut, but later realized he was a different person. Now, this person was an author – he had just published a book at the time I started following him. You can guess the topic of the book – it was motivational – in line with his “life coach” badge. Reading about him, I got to know that he had a family business in manufacturing which he had joined and was devoting his life to it, until one day he met with a road accident and took time to recover. After surviving the accident, he quit managing his business as a full time executive, hired employees to manage everything, and just overlooked the work as an owner. Instead of doing real work, now for many years or decades, he was just focusing on his health and wellness. He used to tour around the world along with his wife, took very nice wild life photographs with his expensive camera, and had a knack for writing and hence he used to write all through the day on the internet. The topics of his writings were about teaching people what to prioritize in life and what to focus on – which was health, peace of mind and family life. It was pretty basic stuff – he was preaching what he was practicing. I was impressed and fascinated with his writings and things he was doing.

Given that he was a life coach and a writer of motivational stuff, he used to always preach others on how to speak, how to behave, how to dress, how to manage money, etc. Hence, I chose the title of this blog post as “a saint from the internet”. Everything was going on well and many months or more than a year passed, when suddenly I discovered a new face of his.

Once he had written about something, praising some people who were doing something, and I felt differently and hence I posted a comment mentioning my disagreement and futility of what he was appreciating. I received a terse reply from him within a minute! He did not use any bad words but just used “sarcasm” to ridicule what I had said. I was taken aback, since I was not expecting such a response from “a saint from the internet”.

Exactly same behaviour repeated afterwards whenever I posted anything in criticism. Through his terse replies, he had made it clear that he did not like what I said (i.e. he did not like me expressing what I did not like). At the same time, he never used any bad words, or did not block/ban me, which was a relief. Since I understood that he did not like criticism, I almost stopped writing any comments/replies on his posts. I even avoided writing comments in appreciation, because naturally, if he did not want both good and bad from me, then he did not deserve anything from me.

Many times I did not like what he said but stopped myself from writing any comment in criticism, fearing his reaction. But after a year or so, this morning I once again posted a comment in disagreement with what he had written. Again, within a minute, his sarcastic reply came. He did not change!

The reason why I am writing this blog post is to send a central message that the “saint from the internet” was not really a saint but just a human being who had learnt to tell nice things to others. He had projected an image of being a very successful businessman (while he had already quit his full-time job), a man in total self-control and a role model to follow for others (while he snapped at every single criticism like his deck of cards were to fall down with a single gush of wind). He was living in a make-belief world, and I decided I was done with him.

I know it is pretty common for people to be very protective of their writings or ideas and to get upset whenever someone criticises them. But they do not claim to be saints, or life-coaches! If one is putting himself on a high pedestal of being a life coach and a motivational writer, one has to also practice a bit of self-control and show some tolerance and empathy. I have seen many people who are not very brilliant or geniuses at what they do – but they are more tolerant and accepting of criticism, and such a maturity is often rated more highly over other forms of excellence.

As I shall let him go down my forgettable memory lane, I would take away a lesson from his life. It is better to be a human who does mistakes, than to be a saint who shouts at any finger that points at one's mistakes.

- Rahul Tiwary