Reputation and Freedom
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That sweet word freedom!
A wish to move up is always born not without a certain amount of the mysterious word of “freedom”. It is so attractive! But next to the social status there always appears a category of “reputation”…
The most widespread (and a most harmful) myth about reputation states that a respected person can afford anything he/she wishes. For example, being an influential official one can behave in a very rude way and threat journalists or being an owner of a large company one can put the screws to their partners and put their own employees through the wringer. Or acting under the slogan “I-am-the-mother/I-did-suffer” one can “suck the blood” of her husband endlessly and unreasonably without any foreseeable reaction of resistance.
The folk wisdom about the mills of God is definitely the wisdom. The reputation opens the door but it also imposes restrictions. Enjoying the trust of people who are important for you, you can buy, borrow, rent something cheaper, sell something at a higher price and establish the first contact easier, or achieve a multiorgasm because you are so “great” and because you have the “ultimate” authority – of applause, likes, reposts, and requests to follow on Facebook.
All of this is possible up to the moment when you feel that you have become a hostage of the reputation that was gained or spontaneously developed. The society seeks for simple solutions. So the more complex the world is, the simpler the solutions are necessary. Not every eye has been able to tell the difference between undertints for quite a while already, and people need a contrast to gain an impression. This implies that we get phantasmagoric costumes and stupid pranks of media personalities.
The public likes one-dimensional behavior. If you are a rich person, you must shine and waste. If you are a freak, fool about and surprise everyone. If you are a glamorous diva, dress in the latest fashion and flirt. If you are a feminist, shred yourself into the Union Jack being nude in front of public offices fighting for the right to work harder than men and to indulge in voluptuous vices along with them. The main thing is you have to live up to your reputation.
By the way, it is very pleasant, up to a point. To be a beauty queen while you are still beautiful or while you are enjoying your beauty. To be a tycoon while consumers are buy, banks are granting credits, partners are relying on you, and money is of value to you. To be a principled politician while you have enough money to live the life you are accustomed to and are not yet sick of it. To be a pop star while you are up for it and have your audience. That is till the very moment you stop enjoying your famous personal brand of any coverage range – from the family to the humanity.
However, everything has an end in this world, except its vagueness and suddenness. Children get a bit long in the tooth and people get a bit different from their made-up stilted images. Someone is worn down by their life and can finally see that the society does not perceive them as they would like it to. A forty-five-year-old bachelor understands all of a sudden that he is not an answer to a maiden’s prayer any more but a genetic leftover thrown onto the scrapheap. A promising highbrow scientist feels he is an off-market kind of “scientific advisor”. A young politician turns into a retired komsomol member.
And somebody finds that the reputation framework they established for themselves once is too tight for them. And he wants to be not just a sweet boy fronting other people’s interests in business but a full-fledged player. Not a devoted half of her husband but a whole entity.
And there starts a new round – each has their own. Someone makes Procrustes’ bed of conventions for themselves with an art worthy of a better cause. Another person pushes on to the next level of understanding what reputation is, what it is for and what the reasons of reputational calcification are. That is the person realizes that reputation makes one both free and captive. The more one is engaged in formal procedures of its development paying no attention to real life, the less one benefits from it and the more problems one faces.
By saying that “I am a business woman” or “I am a sex bomb” we limit our nature and personal fulfillment.
We grow too serious to laugh at ourselves and too boring to be interesting for others. Too preoccupied with public opinion instead of being concerned about the issues of our life’s quality and our destiny. That is, we get dependent, stiff and paralyzed.
Correspondingly, a truly correct attitude to one’s reputation consists not in being hysterical about unprejudiced comments or imperfect photos and not in using press-services and PR-agencies like dogs (“Oh, I don’t look perfect here and I have very few likes there”). It consists in learning to treat work on your reputation as part of your life which is limited and takes no excessive efforts and is a kind of an exciting game, that is treat it both seriously and lightly. Because only this way you can get rid of the framework and become the boss of your reputation, not its hostage.
Tags: Society