Humans Suffer From 'She's Pretty, but Could Have Been Prettier Syndrome'

By Sumit Paul, New Age Islam

27 October 2022

Kisi Ko Paa Kar Bhi Aksar Ye Gumaan Hota Hai

Ke Jaise Rah Gayee Ho Baaqi Koi Kami Phir Bhi

(Despite having someone in life, something keeps gnawing at heart that there's still some void left)

Insaan Ki Khwahishon Ki Koi Intihan Nahin

Do Gaz Zameen Bhi Chahiye, Do Gaz Kafan Ke Baad

-Kaifi Azmi

(There’s no limit to our desires/ We ask for two yards of land besides the shroud even after death)

Almost all humans suffer from ' She's pretty, but could have been prettier Syndrome.'

-Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud

A haughty passenger on a train was giving the dining car waiter his order. “For dessert, “he said, " I'll have tart and ice-cream." The waiter said they had no tarts. The man exploded. “What? No tarts? That's absurd. I'm one of the biggest customers this rail-board has.  Each year I organize trips for thousands of tourists and I've hundreds of tons of freight transported on it. And when I myself travel on the line, I cannot get a simple thing like tarts! “I’ll take this up with the chairman himself." The chef called the waiter aside and said, “We can get him the tart at the next stop." Right after the next stop, the waiter was back again. “I’m happy to inform you, sir that our chef has worked on these tarts especially for you. He hopes, you'll like them. And, with them, we'd like to offer you this seventy-five year old brandy, compliments of the line." The passenger threw his napkin on the table, made a fist and shouted, “To hell with the tarts! I'd rather be angry!"

How empty our lives would be if we had nothing to resent! To many people, constant resentment is the spice of life. It nourishes them!

William Cowper wrote that, “The basic human nature is to fret and fume even if man gets everything at his disposal." Not to be satisfied is the basic human tendency: Naakhushi Mein Zindagi Jeete Rahiye. We always look for the most flimsy opportunities to resent.

Most of us enjoy food at receptions, marriages and on several occasions. We gorge on the food, belch loudly with utmost satisfaction. But after returning home, we hasten to add, “Chhole Badhiya Bane Thay Par Namak Thoda Kam Tha " (Chhole were good, but a trifle banal) or Ice Cream Mein Ek Hi Flavour Tha or vanilla ice-cream was too cheap, whereas you had innumerable cups of that 'cheap' vanilla ice-cream! This is not just limited to food, but can be seen in our grudging and willy-nilly appreciation of people and things. We're never wholehearted in our admiration and somewhere leave a clause of not being happy.

Even a poet like Kamaal Amrohi with a much wider range of sensibilities also wrote an otherwise exquisite Nazm for a forgettable film ' Shankar-Hussain ' (1977), “Kahin Ek Maasoom Nazuk-Si Ladki, Bahut Khoobsoorat MAGAR Saanwli-Si.." (There was a petite damsel, who was very pretty BUT had a dusky complexion). Here, the caveat MAGAR suggests that the damsel's beauty is not so important. But it was her twilight complexion that was some kind of a dampener; a crater on the moon's otherwise silken surface as seen from the earth.

Resentment is everlasting. It's a never-leaving attribute. ‘It’s good but could have been better. ‘This attitude of unhappiness and incompleteness in everything always leaves us wanting for more. American poet and Nobel laureate Thomas Stearns Eliot found William Shakespeare's near-perfect tragedy ' Hamlet ' to be flawed. Where did he find a flaw in the Bard of Avon's legendary work is still unexplained.

Jay Shankar Prasad's epic 'Kamayani ' is the quintessential work belonging to Chhayavaad  genre of Hindi poetry and is ranked among the top 100 epics in the anthology of world literature, yet there're are people who argue relentlessly that it could have been written better.

Urdu poet Yaas Yagana Changezi could never like Mirza Ghalib's poetry. Why did he dislike Ghalib and his poetry so much is still shrouded in mystery. Changezi himself was an excellent poet. Yet, he went on to tomahawk Ghalib's entire oeuvre till he (Changezi) breathed his last. Don't forget, this nagging unhappiness and a niggling sense of dissatisfaction can prove to be killjoys.

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A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to world's premier publications in several languages including Persian.

 

URL:   https://newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/humans-pretty-prettier-syndrome/d/128275

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