Comparison of sadness between man and animals...a HR message

Why the life of most people in corporate is often filled with lot of stress, problems and is in a state of uncertainty? In fact most corporate would provide paraphernalia and all comforts that the employees need to perform.

If we look at the life of different species of animals in the jungle, the problems of all animals in jungle are real. However animals appear to suffer the least when compared to man. The problems of man is not just physical but psychological but the psychological problems are unlikely to be high among animal world.

First and foremost, we need to understand the problem definition. In human life, the problems often get magnified several folds due to comparison and contemporariness.

Most people in corporate expect good increment, promotion to next level and appreciation for their work from top management mostly because every employee always wants to look great to their peer group. More than they really want all the above (promotion, increment etc.,), the employees want to grab the attention of others and wants to be in an envious position.

If they fail to grab the attention of others or fail to create envy upon others, most feel their life is miserable. This is their biggest challenge. The other challenge is that even if they do not look great to their peer group, they do not want to look silly. On the contrary, those who do not wants to engage in creating an identity for them will turns to become subterranean species, prefers to be invisible to others.

There is also another challenge they face in corporate. That is, if they fail to evoke jealous upon others and catch their attention, they become jealous on others. They start comparison to ascertain their value and contemporariness.

If we carefully look at the life of animals we can find that none of the above challenges ever exist in animal world viz.,

1. None of the animals ever try to catch the attention of other animals nor do they try to evoke jealous upon them (except during breeding season)
2. None of the animals ever fear that they should not look so silly to others and therefore they must work with caution and care
3. None of the animals seems to ever develop jealous upon others and would

compare their value and contemporariness.
Whether they live a solitary life or remain in groups, they remain more as individuals. They struggle a lot to survive than earn respect and recognition from others. Only when our desire moves towards creating self identity, respect & recognition from others and seek attention from others & create jealous of others, life become miserable.

Corporate people have all the three challenges viz., either they work to earn respect of others or hide to avoid the possibility of being looked upon as silly or would develop jealous upon others. The above thinking or expectation is not the only cause for sadness. The scope of one having the three separate emotions to replace one for the other only contributes to our grief.

Imagine, if the scope for such replacement is absent, people will certainly continue to work to earn the respect of others than being jealous of others or would prefers to be subterranean species.

Unfortunately, man lacks his original identity and hence he casually changes or looses his identity. The animals on the other hand, always remain in their real identity. This is true with both prey and predator.

Create your own identity and live with it. Never create your identity and look for others to endorse or recognize it. You cannot live with an identity that is presumed to have been created by others. Such situation would warrant one to change the identity often, just for the sake of others.

Be a product of what you are and how you think than how others should think or how to earn their recognition.

Reason for the sadness of people in corporate is only due to identity crisis.

Dr S Ranganathan