Who is your role model?

Huh!! (scratching my head?) I am pretty confused!! My role models seem to change frequently!

This was a question which I was lately asked by a friend, but I got confused, and I couldn’t really answer it well (as I was playing a rapid-fire-Q&A game). But started really thinking about it. Many things come into my mind - is it so that I don’t have a role model, is it so tht I am confused and not having a purpose in life, is it so that I will be disrespecting the Father of our Nation by not giving him this most coveted position (coz there was once a time when I would have taken his name as an answer to this question)………… So, to answer this question (and not lose points in the rapid-fire game), all I said that my role models keep changing, and currently that position is not taken by a particular person, but an idea of a personality – who is entrepreneurial and dynamic in nature.

But I am a great fan of Blink (by Malcolm Gladwell – I really recommend it for serious thinkers out there)! And from the lessons I have learnt from there, it seems like my subconscious ended up giving the correct answer in the blink of an eye, without me doing complex calculations. Truly speaking, the idea of a role model changes. The more it changes the better for you! Because a role model is someone who makes you do whatever you do. A role model is the kind of person we want to become. A role model is responsible for the actions that you take, and in life we do not keep doing the same kind of things again and again. We do not keep thinking along the same lines of thought all through our lives. Times change and so do our thoughts, our beliefs and our standings. Changing of role models is an indication of evolution of your thoughts. The more flexible you are the more your role models will change; the more fundamentalist you are, the lesser time you are going to take in a rapid-fire-Q&A session.

As I look back in time, I have seen my role models changing from a person to an idea of a person. There was a time when on being asked this question I would have pointed to one of my teachers (partly because he had a great fan-following among girls). But today I don’t really have a clear answer for that. And what about Mr. Gandhi? To tell you frankly I respect him a lot for his experiments with truth, but cant make him a role model (I seriously tried it once, but failed terribly). Actually I realized pretty late, that he is not my type!

So what do you think about your role models? Are there any?