I don’t want to be Bill Gates

One of my pet peeves is humans idolizing humans. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying people do not have extraordinary qualities and if they have them, they should not be admired. They should be, absolutely!

What I can’t relate to is when someone mistakes one or two qualities in a person to their whole being.

Bill Gates is rich.

Do I want to be as wealthy as him? YESSSS!

Do I admire his philanthropy efforts? Of course!

Do I want to read 50 books a year? I do.

Do I want to be Bill Gates? No, I don’t.

Because there are qualities in me that I love. I love being me. And some of them are unique and I don’t think anyone else has them. And now I cannot live without them. And I am pretty sure, I have got a few things in my life that I would consider better than what Bill has. My voice as an example. Not that it is great but I am not too fond of Bill’s :) my freedom to walk my dog in my neighborhood and so on…

Going back to the topic. Btw, topic is not Bill Gates. That was just to grab attention. Hang on! It is related. I didn’t lie. I don’t lie. Never. Almost.

Anyways, my point is related to the law of averages. Mathematics haters, please excuse me for this:

If we think of top 50 qualities that are most admired in the world. Give them some sort of scores on what quality is admired the most vs least. It could be wealth, looks, intelligence, kindness, humility, modesty, communication skills, writing skills, family orientation, politeness, integrity, sexiness, boldness and so on. You get the gist of it.

Now give all the people a score on these top 50 qualities. Add up the score and then divide by 50 to get the average. My hypothesis is that my score and Bill Gate’s score will not be very different. And same with your score. Obviously, there will be some outliers to this rule. Some with very low score and some with very high. But it is very likely that the outliers with high scores will not be the people who are generally admired the most because of the magnitude of what they have e.g. Albert Einstein’s intelligence, Brad Pitt’s looks, Indra Nooyi’s corporate success, Bill Gates’s wealth and so on. The outliers would be some of the jack of all trade people who are admired in their local community or by people close to them but they hardly grab world’s attention. People who grab attention have some extraordinary qualities. It’s different from extra ordinary people. Let’s not confuse the two. I am sure a lot of you may disagree with me on this. It’s probably similar to the generalist vs specialist debate. But one quality does not make us a person. It’s a combination of all values and qualities that we possess.

It is fine to admire qualities in others. The problem is when the focus is on just one quality and we forget what all we have in us and we do not appreciate that. That does lead to dissatisfaction in life. Sometimes even inferiority complex because we are focused on just one or two things that we lack and others admire. Then you see people who keep looking for things that they see in others but do not stop and appreciate what they themselves possess. And very likely what they have is something that many other people would kill to have.

Happiness starts with being happy with yourself. Being happy with yourself starts with knowing yourself better. Knowing yourself starts with noticing yourself and noticing what others see in you. There is so much more that you have than what you think or know.

Yes, you can have more. But if you will not stop and appreciate what you have then you will keep looking for more until you are no more :) Well don’t be upset, that’s the biggest reality of life. And one of my current thought is that you should link almost everything to death. That gives everything a perspective. But more on that another day.

Let me know what you think.