There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
-Nelson Mandella
This quote is fine, up to a point. The idea that we shouldn’t let other people’s insecurities decide the way we act SOUNDS like a good idea, until you get to the question of applying it to real life. And then you realize that Nelson Mandella just put his Very Respected Name underneath the personal philosophy of every ignorant loudmouth in the world. It’s one thing to not shrink when you’re fighting apartheid; it’s quite another to bully some poor kid into giving you his lunch money.
Maybe sometimes it’s ok to love other people enough to become lesser so that they can become greater. Unless your point is that people can only grow if they confront those insecurities, another point that SOUNDS good until you find yourself Dwight Schruted in the middle of nowhere and told to find your way back to camp so you can pass some insane initiation. Again, this cannot be universally applied to any insecurity. This is why it’s a bad quote.
I would further submit that you’re more here on this earth for others than you are for yourself, but that’s admittedly a crazy idea and easily dismissable on the grounds that it requires faith, which as we all know is not scientific and therefore just nutty. Carry on enlightenedly browbeating weaker people with your hideous strength.
