I once heard a funny story from my grandmother about reputation. She said that reputation is like an egg, if it falls and breaks, it is difficult to glue it back together. What happens is scrambled eggs. :)
Speaking of reputation, I remember an incident in high school. There was a classmate, let's call him Budi (not his real name of course), who was known as an exemplary student. His grades were always perfect, his behavior was polite like a little angel in neat clothes. But one day, he was caught cheating on a math test. Not just peeking at his friend's answers, but in a very creative way, namely writing the formula on the palm of his hand with ink that can only be seen with UV light from his special pen.
Since then, every time Budi gets a good grade, everyone looks at him suspiciously. "Maybe he used UV ink again," whispered his classmates. Poor Budi, just one mistake has changed his good reputation for four years. As the English proverb says: it takes years to build a reputation, and minutes to destroy it.
But there’s also a funny side to our obsession with reputation. We often act like castle guards, hypervigilant about protecting our “image.” But sometimes, the best reputations come when we stop worrying so much about them.
I remember trying to look perfect on my first day at work. Hair combed, shoes polished, presentation meticulously prepared. But what happened? I tripped over the projector cord, dropped my (thankfully empty) coffee cup, and my presentation opened on the wrong slide — featuring a cat meme I’d saved for fun.
Oddly enough, the incident made my coworkers feel more human and approachable. My reputation as a “clumsy perfectionist” turned into a “friendly person who can laugh.”
Maybe that’s what makes reputations so interesting — like our reflections in the mirror, sometimes they don’t match up to what we imagine. Some people are so afraid of their reflection cracking that they forget to smile in the mirror. Others are so busy cleaning the mirror that they forget that what really matters is who we are.
As my wise grandmother once said: "Reputation is important, but don't let yourself be an actor on the stage of your own life. Let others judge. What matters is that you remain a whole egg - even with a few cracks here and there."
And maybe that's what reputation is all about - not about perfection, but about how we get up after we fall, laugh after we fail, and keep walking upright even if we sometimes trip over the projector cord.😃
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