IS IT POSSIBLE TO LIVE LIFE WITHOUT ANY ICONS?










In life, we all need icons. We need them for constant motivation and inspiration. Many of our icons are people who are around us… who we meet, talk to and interact with… Maybe our parents, grandparents, uncles or aunts, brothers or sisters, our teachers, work colleagues or friends or someone from our neighbourhood. We pick our icons from this lot. Similarly, we pick our icons from some living legends – from any field – who, unlike the earlier lot, we do not met, talk to or interact with… But, we constantly get motivation and inspiration from these icons. The third lot is those legends who have long dead and gone… spiritual masters, freedom fighters and revolutionaries, scientists, civil liberty leaders, Presidents and Prime Ministers, inventors and explorers and so on…

I, sometimes, hear some making this remark: “I don’t believe in icons” or “I don’t have any icons”. I wonder: “Is it possible to live life without any icons – call them idols, Heroes or Role models? A couple of times, I have argued passionately on this subject… but, I have not been able to change the views of those who think icons are irrelevant in life. Yes, if we are talking about blind hero-worship, then, not only icons are irrelevant in life, they are also very, very dangerous…

The Law of Attraction is in action: “What you deeply admire and like, you attract in your life.”

I am careful when I say so and so is my icon, my idol… For, I only admire him for some of his visible qualities… which I have seen, felt, heard or read about. Yes, I immensely admire him for those qualities… I desire to imbibe those qualities in me, too… Hence, I choose him to be my icon, my role model… The more and more I admire his qualities, the more and more I attract them in me…






I do not know so much about my icons… Their dark side is not visible to me… As my own dark side is invisible to others. There are people around me who admire me for some of my qualities and consider me to be their idol. In my own unassuming way, I, brush aside this saying, “I am simply a fallible human… I have my huge flaws”… and all that…

But, honestly, if I have picked fallible humans as my own icons and allowed my life to be shaped by their visible or invisible presence, I can’t stop others from picking me or any other fallible human as their icon…

Yes, we do need icons. For, we do like some of their exceptional qualities. We may not be able to live on the Moon or touch the Stars ever in our life… We may not be able to live, even for a day, on the snow-capped peaks of  mountains.  But, then, are we not fascinated by them, day in and day out? The Moon is just a big bundle of mess and Stars are just some burning gases… The glorious mountains will disappoint us when we go close to them… But, then, there is something that constantly calling us from them!





I started admiring Amitabh Bachchan when I first read about him in a magazine in our high school library… I was 14, studying in ninth standard, and this tall awkward-looking person had just acted in the movie, ‘Bombay to Goa’. Some forty-five years or so now… My fascination for this stupendous star has only increased as years have rolled by… I have watched, with joy and sorrow in my heart, along his journey from a Nobody to Somebody to Nobody to Somebody… There is so much to learn and imbibe from this icon of mine… that, I don’t mind this distant fascination be damned as ‘blind hero-worship’…

For, I know, it is not. Amitabh Bachchan is no ordinary ‘Star’…

Happy b’day sir. Please place your hand on my head on your 75th!


GERALD D’CUNHA

Pics.: Internet/NDTV

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