It is somewhat true that the individuality of a person makes him feel good either when he is recognized for what he does or when he has an undying faith in himself.
What about the people who do not have either?
It is very much a possibility for a person to grow and nurture himself without any recognition in anything that he does or with the unfavorable circumstances to make him feel confident about being himself every now and then.
Developing countries are usually dominated by the lower and middle class families. Lower, lower middle & average middle class kids are often caught up in the illusions like, What am I good for? Can I ever do what I want to? Is there a possibility that can favor me like it did for several others, whom I have heard about? And many questions like that.
Not having seen any role model closely in their life, not having heard of the success stories than some smaller achievements made bigger by the adults around bring their horizon to a level where the kids in developed countries might start to see further.
These stories usually are restricted to the achievements of someone in the family or to some distant relation. How someone boarded the airplane or even went out of country for the first time, how somebody got to manage a job out of the family tradition or how somebody made sacrifice with his life or his career for someone close in an inevitable situation or somebody having struggled throughout his life to make a house for the family. Therefore, making a house in the lifetime, going out of country, finding a highly paid job, struggling to do something out of family tradition is a big achievement for the kids from such communities and this constitutes their happiness.
Such kids tend to associate themselves with the situations which are more about misery. They tend to see more tragedy in the community and the country they live in than the average person who would prefer some comedy or romance through television. For them tragedy is easier to find than compassion, even though compassion likely exists in greater proportions. It is more likely for them to identify the misery even in the comedy or the romance that they see.
According to some study, children develop themselves along four streams, Intellectual, Physical, Emotional (Psychological) & Social.
It’s only the smartest kids who are a part of almost all activities in the classrooms. But there are nerds around, commonly known as "geeks", they are odd or social outsiders. They may develop themselves intellectually or even physically where opportunities exist for more progress but they lack socially in comparison. They might not know how to handle a friend who teases them in front of all the girls/ boys, how to refuse somebody for a favor, how to ask somebody for a help without being overwhelmed, they might not even know how to get engaged to the opposite gender at all.
Their emotional development characterized by their ability to cope up with stressful situations over a long period of time also lags. And then there are adults, so called "Elders". They believe that an intellectually superior kid can deal with most of the situations and do not consider it as important to guide him/ her as they would do for a dumb kid in their view. This inevitably let these intellectual kids go through tough times alone either without or with underdeveloped skills to support themselves.
Adults do not understand easily that they actually need help as these kids do not look to be shaken or affected from their outlook. They may talk even sensible during such situations but it does not necessarily mean that they can handle such situations without an external helping hand.
These kids also have the feeling of getting associated with the social infrastructure but then the social kids term them as 'outsiders' and do not want to associate with them. Eventually we have several many highly intelligent people today but with lesser social quotient. It should come as no surprise to see most of the back bencher(s) from a class manage to do much bigger things with quite an ease being happy, and in fact they tend to be happy most of the times. For them the only important thing in life is to do something that brings them small small happiness whereas the intellectual kid might be seen struggling to carve a niche out for himself.
Developing countries do not provide good incubators for the people who are socially inept and those with emotional coping problems. Therefore, these people will not be the among you should expect to be happy most of the times.
Education system in developing countries primarily favors wealth accumulation as a whole, eventually, encourages the students to take up the fields which either offer quick money at an early stage like engineering ( today it is synonymous to softwares), or wealth bundled with huge recognition like movie heroes or which brings them easy money like Govt. services or sometimes getting into army as well. Medicine is enjoyed for money, respect but for a social service.
For such countries nurturing the intellectual development is more about individual efforts or a task of special communities which are usually distributed and take several distributed efforts to bring about some difference in the society. There is no structured approach towards that. It is even difficult to arrange sufficient infrastructure for the same.
Extraordinary or super intellectuals manage but only few reach the top ladder. Average ones still remain at the ground, thinking, wondering, figuring out all the what(s), why(s) & how(s).
Times are changing though, today geeks gain high recognition as the people with great potential, and they are more socially accepted than in the past but they still rank as social outsiders in most situations, including their skills to be a good mate or parents. Unless they receive more assistance with their social and emotional development, most are destined to be unhappy as they mature in the world of adults.
And if you disagree with any of the explanations above, try scratching any such intellectual person around you, you are more likely to get convinced. How desperate are they to be happy! How badly do they also want to explore the road to happiness! And how fed up are they with any artificial or forceful activity to make them feel good or happy about!
Being happy is a process, a big process.
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