Aim-less direction

We all have a routine that we daily adhere to. We get up, get ready and then head out to our job, school or just stay at home and repeat the routine of cleaning up the house etc. The same activities are done over and over again, just the content associated with the activity changes. A typical sentence in an SD’s (software developer) vocabulary is “I already fixed bug #X,Y,Z last week, this week there are bigger issues bug #A,B need to be addressed while a new bug – bug number #C has come up.” That’s all that we have become. Earlier our routine was a part of our lives, now our lives have become a part of our routine. We move your lives around to fit these pre-set “schedule”. Very few fight the paradigm anymore. Those who do are either revered as “mavericks” if they succeed or “losers” if they fail. Richard Fuld was hailed as a maverick when he brought Lehman brothers out of crisis, and now as the investment banking giant crumbles people question his judgment and his ability to lead.

As we grow, we kill our ability to learn. Lethargy and lack of self belief lead us to mindless and aimlessly follow the path ahead of us. With little or no idea behind what our objective is, we travel the path set to us by the bounds of society. Slowly we change. We accept that our existence is to traverse that path. We believe that the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is what we really want. (After all, most if not all paths that society has defined for us, have their goal set as money). We crush our dreams and then set these goals as our dreams instead. In a seminar held at my company, the speaker asked us “what is the one thing that you really want to do but just can’t time for?” Different people had different answers but one thing remained common, most of them knew that they really wouldn’t be pursuing that goal anytime soon. He asked us to, many agreed but I am sure if you ask them now, most of them would not have acted upon it.

I did. Thanks to a friend of mine – Miranda - I did. A month later I was jumping out of a plane and experiencing the thrill of a gravity free fall over 10,000 feet in the air. I owe that to her. Consider it whatever you want (lethargy, busy schedule) but I didn’t know where to begin and somehow I just wasn’t making enough efforts to find out. But she knew. She gave us the info and a month later Eric, Molly and me were jumping out of a plane.

I tend to question my existence a lot. Perhaps more than what is healthy. But now I stand at the juncture again where I want to know “where am I heading?” or slightly re-phrased “am I where I wanted to be?” Most people wouldn’t know the answer to that question, some will. I don’t. And again I don’t know where to start looking. All I know is that this time I don’t want to be lazy and let life dictate its terms. This time I want to stand up, take notice and decide what I want. I might make a wrong decision, I might make a mistake but this time I don’t want to let circumstances lead my life, I want to lead it. You can be scared of making a wrong decision and never take one, but to me no decision is wrong unless proven so. I know what will happen if my decision ends up being a wrong one – absolutely nothing. No one decision can dictate what happens to my life and what happens to me. Shit happens, but I am a fighter – I’ll always make it through.