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Living with an Underdeveloped Personality

him by the interviewer: “You are totally different on the
sets from what you are in real life. How do you succeed
in performing a role which is totally different from
your actual personality?” The actor replied: “When we
perform, we totally detach ourselves. We cast ourselves
in the mould of the character we have to play.”
Our age is one of professionalism. And when an
individual enters his chosen profession, he has to
perform his role therein under some ‘director’. While
doing so, he detaches himself from himself for the
time being. And sometimes he is obliged to do so on
more than one occasion. But, here, there is a problem.
This state of affairs is not for life. A time comes when
a person has to retire from his profession and after
retirement, he is faced with a new situation. Where, in
the pre-retirement period he assumed the role of one
positive personality after another, now, in the post-
retirement period, he must return to being his own self,
a self which had remained in an underdeveloped state.
Now he has to live with a personality which has never
been fully rounded out and leaves much to be desired.

The post-retirement period is the most precious
period of any person’s life, because, that is the age of
maturity. Yet, the difference between the two successive
periods of his life results in a feeling of desolation. In
the pre-retirement period, he was acclaimed as a super-
performer. Now, in the post-retirement period, he is
reduced to being almost a non-performer – a nonentity.
This explains why, in the second phase of their lives,
almost all the so-called successful individuals live in
despair and die in despair.

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