Why You Like Being Liked!

Like, giving or receiving, is the quintessence of life. Life can be reduced only to strife if you do not like or get liked; of course, such a situation is rare in most of the lives lived on this likeable earth. At the very beginning, meaning when you are born, it remains uncertain if you like being born or before that being conceived in the womb; the situation becomes murkier because most babies cry after getting born, and it is considered  a healthy sign. Therefore, we will omit the very beginning of our life when, in any case, we don’t know why that ‘me’ gets into a particular womb through some particular external source amid billions and gets born into a particular family in a particular place on our likeable earth, and focus mainly on the ‘likes’ generated continuously throughout our conscious life and why we always like being liked.

We start liking our parents, particularly mom, our food, our relatives, our friends, our teachers, our gender-specific entities, our bosses, various objects ranging from gadgets to books to schools to colleges to jobs and so on, and likes for us emanate from all such sources; because, our likings always generate a positive ‘feel-good’ factor that keeps us kicking alive. Therefore, in this probably ‘likeable’ piece of writing we’ll concentrate on why we like it tremendously well when getting liked by other humans or animals or pets. We will keep ourselves fully safe from any kind of ‘disliking’ factors lurking in every ‘likeable’ corner; that is say; we dislike being disliked at that.

At a very young age we feel energetic when mom smiles sweetly at us and encourages us to take the first steps in life, and we erupt into endless giggles which make the art of walking all the easier. When a father likes our hand-written alphabets we feel so happy that we start making more efforts to produce more beautiful letters. Our mom looks heavenly when we make no bones about food and start taking healthy mouthfuls, and it makes us so joyful that we make a vow to always make her happy. When our class teacher smiles looking at our homework and utters his/her likes this very act makes us all the more striving students. When our friends like our birthday presents or other gifts we become better friends. On the playground as some of us show our unique expertise or intelligence our team building spirit gets a fillip.

In the various other more mature stages of life the voluminous story of ‘getting liked’ becomes more elaborate, productive and infectious, a bit too much for this writer’s comfort, and therefore, we will mention only a few significant situations. Examiner likes your answers, teacher announces, amid heavy tension, the marks obtained, and if you get the highest or very good marks you get enthralled and grateful; if you happen to exchange looks with members of the opposite gender, and those looks convert into smiles or talks you get an adrenaline charge, and teasing from your friends makes it all the more enjoyable, of course, sometimes a ‘like’ becomes ‘love’ which is, however, not included in this presentation; a faceless examiner somewhere gives you good marks for your answer paper for a job, you get a call for interview, interviewers like your personality and you get the job, and this makes you the happiest person in life; it is assumed you immensely like your spouse, and if the spouse gives back that ‘like’ or ‘love’ you find your life worth living; when your boss likes your works and recommends a promotion you are in the seventh heaven with insatiable energy and in the ensuing family life of being a father, being an uncle, being in-laws, being a grandfather and so on an expansive series of ‘likes’ get generated that keep you happy and happier. There could be many other situations when your creative contributions get liked and you become famous, through a delightful web of likes. Then, of course, there are the festivals, parties, get-togethers, family re-unions and the like where the likes generated are huge and deliciously infectious.

This ‘probably likeable’ piece would remain incomplete if we exclude the social media of today’s digital world from our purview. Well, in the social media there is a cut-throat competition for generating and devouring ‘likes’. If your post gets less than double-digit likes you normally won’t become unhappy, but will try better posts; more than ten likes will make you considerably happy and if you hit a century of likes you get charged up and ‘viral’ is the last word for your limitless like-generated happiness. However, there are certain unwritten rules for performing well in the social media—that you’ll have to be hyperactive on a continued basis, and you’ll have to like others a lot to generate likes for you. Therefore, a social media dictum emerges—like and get liked.

We have seen clearly how a like makes us happy at every stage of our life, and it is the best thing God has given us. We have not mentioned the word ‘appreciation’ which is also the best possible expression of positivity, because appreciation normally follows a like, in most of the situations. So we can look forward to having a species of ‘like-minded’ humans which can only be a good development on this suffering planet earth. There is also no harm to generalize the dictum evolving in the social media. Like and get liked. Happiness guaranteed.