We have known since we were kids at School or at the Playground, how one child through no fault of his own is singled out to bear the brunt of practical jokes and sometimes even humiliation.
It could be for anything that the rest of his friends and playmates felt was wholesome fun although at the cost of the poor lad. Peer level leverage making itself felt, so to speak.
Later with advancement in intellect and age, this takes on several forms of mind games. I remember when I was in Junior High how the Undergraduates “officated” their Initiation Rituals for the new arrivals at University.
“Ragging” as it was known. The new arrivals had to submit themselves to indescribable humiliation and for some it was at a personal risks, depending on what was enforced. In those days, there were reported cases of fatalities from these clandestine ragging activities.
Faced with this deplorable dilemma, these who suffer and who struggled to be accepted as “one of the gang” are wont to pull down the whole world around them into their personal misery. It’s a pity-party time Folks! The more extreme ones contemplate taking their own lives or taking others along with them.
For anyone who has been there, there’s no further need to write about what it is like to climb out of that rut while it lasts.
Now, at the other end of the scale, we have those people who bask in the realm of unassailable attainment. They succeed. They have brains. They have the ability. They think that they have it – almost all of it.
Alas! have you met these who go past the threshold of common sense despite their vaunted intellect? They don’t know how to handle success. They go overboard. They become eccentric, arrogant, pompous and mock at others.
Their hold their position above the fundemental realities of decent human interaction and from their elevated and dignified self conceitedness they are unable to conduct themselves as mortals.
Now, which of these two is more damning? The person who cannot handle failure or the person who cannot handle success?
