Be sincere, Dont be serious!

While I was young, I had the opinion that sincere people are always serious. May be the notion
that I got by seeing my gradfather.So sometimes I have even mistaken people with a serious or a thoughtful look to be sincere.How far this notion is true? I am wondering.
At work my manager once mentioned in a mail to the team 'Be sincere, dont be serious'. I was not able to understand how both thse two attributes are different!
My manager is ofcourse a very jovial and friendly person and so is almost the whole team of ours. So the comment in the mail made me think 'may be this comment is made at me' as I always have a serious look when at work ( that is what my friends say!).

When I think of sincere people, the first person who comes to mind is my granddad- my mother's dad. He is an epitome of sincerity. A rolemodel for me. I still remember the days when he used to work for days and nights together after his retirement to collect and compile the contact details of the residents and owners of the houses in our colony. My grandma used to tell him 'are you the only resident of this colony. Cant somebody else do this? What are you gaining by doing this?'. He would simply turn to her and say 'you people will not realise the importance of this work now'. Thats true! We realised the importance of his work only when postmen and new comers to the colony come to my granddad for locating a particular address. Sometimes they will come with a name and a wrong address. My granddad would be very happy to help them to reach their destination. He is a person who will do all good things without expecting anything in return. He always used to have a serious or thoughtful look.May be the image that has got registered in my mind of my granddad is one reason that I was unable to find the difference between seriousness and sincerity.
How many people nowadays do good things without expecting anything in return? Even if people come forward to do so they are labelled as foolish.Sometimes it makes us feel that the days are gone, when you can do good at any time and at any cost. Now you need to think twice before doing something you think would be good to the society.
Coming back to the topic, do all sincere people look serious? And are all serious looking people sincere? Putting it in other way, when people wish to do something very sincerely, they need to focus on it. When they do something with great focus, as far as I have seen, they have a serious look. Unless something else diverts them for a while, they seldom smile or laugh. I think now I have got the point of what my manager said. 'Take a break once a while, whichwill re-energise you to reach your goal faster!'. I may or may not be correct. So I wish the readers of this blog would register their perception here as comments.

Technorati Tags: Sincerity seriousness

The Importance of Being Earnest-A Review

It was a very gloomy sarurday today. I had a lot of weekend tasks to be done. But didnt feel like doing anything. Surfed all the tv channels; didnt find anything interesting. So had a small afternoon nap- something you feel you deserve after a long tiring week. After waking up, still I didnt feel like completing my works. I allowed myself to take a break promising myself to finish everything the next day. The only thing I can do at any time is reading books which had been my passion from my school days.
I tookup reading the book in the title written by Oscar Wilde. I feel I have read some other work of him also during my school days, but unable to recollect what. This book I have been reading for sometime. I took up this book intrigued by the title. I hoped it will talk about as the title suggests 'earnestness' or 'authenticity'. But to my disappointment it doesn't. I said I have been reading for some time now. Yes not because it is a voluminous book, but because it has a very boring start with multiple confusing names. Only later I realised that the theme of the novel lies in the names themselves.

The storyline seems to be a familiar one, one of a person in the disguise of an nonexisting character. Later he finds that he himself is the person in whose disguise he was. His own statement "it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth" brings it out well. Though it is a familiar story in these times, it should have been a new one in the times of Oscar wilde.
A story spun with a lot of sarcasm and fancies of each character, good for a one time read. If you are patient enough you can read it in few hours unlike me:)