I have a confession to make: I hate reading inspirational stories.
Okay, perhaps hate is a strong word. And it is not entirely true either. No, I don’t really hate motivational stories. I don’t really loathe success stories. Yet everytime I read one of those stuffs which say, “If I can do it, so do you!” I can’t help but feeling my heart being jabbed with a thousand tiny little spikes.
It slaps me on my face and say instead, “What the hell are you doing with your life?”
Is it jealousy? Not really. It is just like those native dwellers who were content with their lives and yet still being forced to adopt the ‘advanced’ way of living. They were happy before. Everything was enough. But someone suddenly came and told them that this was no way to be living.
It feels just the same.
If I can help it, I’ll not be reading books which are motivational. They are good, of course, and people need encouragement once in a while. But that kind of encouragement doesn’t work for me. In fact, it makes me shudder. It makes me want to go back into my cocoon for I know no one will judge me there. It makes me dissect my own life only to find everything short of the world’s standard.
And no, it’s not really jealousy. I think of the lives these people who are ‘way up there’ in every aspect of their lives compared to mine and I don’t want those kinds of life either. I want this. I want my life. But those success stories tell me that this is not the life I should be living. They tell me that I can do more, I need to achieve more, I have to always be positive and keep on being motivated and just believe in my own potentials.
It’s just that I’m not.
I’m not doing more, I’m not achieving more.
It’s not being sad of other people’s happiness either. Well, to be perfectly honest, of course it’s human nature to not really be happy in seeing other people’s fortune and successes, but sometimes, reading those stories, they don’t propel me to do something. They don’t fuel the passion for me to achieve success for myself.
In fact, they destroy me. They destroy me because all I can think of is how small and insignificant I am compared to them. I don’t mind living my life – I am perfectly content and happy with it. But somehow I mind living it when suddenly the fact is shoveled down my throat. I’m not being inspired. Far from that.
I know, I know. Motivational, inspirational, success stories are there to help other people know that they can make it too. They are there to tell someone that it is not impossible.
But…
But if they are successful and they are the standard, what does it make me at the moment? A failure? A loser? A person who is just not trying hard enough because apparently, I can do it, it’s just that I am not doing it?
I know, I know.
I know that reading inspirational stories should make me feel better. They should have inspired me with a thousand stars.
But no. More often than not, inspirational stories make feel worse.
Photo by good2bbald.
