Eureka - Does it happen

Disclaimer: It’s the middle of the night (3:09 AM to be precise). I cannot be held responsible for writing something that makes no sense.

When do we reach our limits? Does one have a eureka moment of enlightenment?

Back in the day I decided that I would be better than the rest. That I would not participate in the rat race but would rather excel and chart my path. Somewhere along that journey I got lost. Not only did I lose directions but I also lost my destination.

There is only hope today. Hope of finding my way back. The problem – Hope is not a plan.

The following questions need an answer

- What

- Why

- How

When is not an issue. Once I know the what and how, the why will dictate the when automatically.

Future holds a lot of things for us. Sadness I hope plan is not one of them. Tomorrow brings a new day, a new light. Sounds cliché doesn’t it. The first reaction of anyone hearing that would be tomorrow will be no different. Stop kidding yourself. Things won’t change in a day just because you want them to.

[This is the part of the article where I would write something profound to shut those pessimists up. But I don’t care to. I write this because I want to and not because someone needs to read]

Tomorrow will bring a change for me. Simply because I choose so. Before EOD tomorrow, I will have a plan for the next week. The what and the how will be decided. I can’t decide why as yet because the what needs to be significant enough to decide the why. For now this will have to do.

What should we chase?

It's been a while since I wrote. These are just some random thoughts

What is important enough to us to chase?

Financial Security -
As I look at my life, I am well settled for a 25 year old. Having a reasonably well paying secured job, I have the luxury to spend money if I want to. Not that I can buy a Lexus tomorrow, but I don’t need to rethink my finances if I spend $1,000 on something I want. The problem – I don’t think is a significant achievement. There seems to be more to life than making ends meet. May be it’s just the fact that I have never experienced financial hardships, but to me life is more than just worrying about what is the source of your next pay check.

Dreams -
During this trip back to India, I met two friends who chased their dreams in two different ways. L was working in a call center and decided to make the most of his dreams there. When I had known him, he was working as the floor operation manager at one of the Mumbai call centers. 5 years on, he is now the VP of a call center (I don’t know if it’s at the same call center). He is only a couple of years elder to me, and though working in an industry traditional looked down upon, nobody can deny his achievements. And he is happy.
The second case is T. He is working as a freelancer for a media graphics start up. His life lacks everything that mine has. He lives in literally in a slum in Bandra in an area that I didn’t know existed (he lives close to where I lived during my engineering, but I never knew there was a slum there). Honestly saying, I don’t know if I could struggle through those conditions to achieve my dreams. But he is.

Prestige –
All of us want to feel important. We want to believe that our existence makes a difference. I believe I have reached that position at my current employer. I am the SME (subject matter expert) for my part of the application and regularly help others. But look beyond the small world of my employer and I don’t exist. If I look to what I think I want to do in life, my current work is not contributing to me being able to make that transition. If I were to search for job profiles of what I want, I do not make the requirements.
It may be a mix of these. I don’t think an individual can be happy unless he chases his dreams. Getting up each morning, you should feel like you want to go to work. The sad part, most of us don’t. Though my sample set is a small one (only my friends), over 90% of them don’t like what they are doing. They do so only to make ends meet or because society expects them to do so.
I still think I want to risk it. At the risk of ending up in the financial position of T, I want to reach the mark that L is at (my friends).

A lost soul

As I walk through the jungle, I realize I am alone. I seem to have left my group behind. Don't really remember which at which turn it happened; but as I kept moving forward, they did not seem to keep up. I should have looked behind. Should have told them - "here is where I'm heading". But then again, I never knew where is it I was going. As I traversed through the horde of paths available to me, I kept trying to find my way forward. Left at this juncture, I am faced with the choice again. I could traverse back a bit hoping to find the rest of them but the uncertainty of success scares me. I think I want to just keep moving forward. Sometime, somewhere this path will lead me to... To what I do not know. May be I'm destined to be a traveler all my life. In any case, I can't stand still. Let me pack my bag pack and move, for now with uncertainty.

A Torn Soul

A broken heart, a shattered goal. All that remains is the final blow. You know you’re in deep shit when your life seems to have been reduced to a mere existence; reduced to a routine that you follow every day. This year has been harsh on you. You lost your love, you lost your will, hell you even lost yourself. All you wanted was to be happy. To share a smile with someone; with someone who left you crying alone. You know you need to win, but how does one win against oneself. This fight seems to be a lost cause. From the looks of everything around you; from the look of the existence known as your life, it seems you’re destined to lose. Destined to not achieve your goal.

Destiny is playing a cruel game and you seem to be the preferred choice for the role of guinea pig. If sadness was an entity, then the lyrics from Alan Seeger’s rendezvous come to mind.
“It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath--
It may be I shall pass him still.”

Its new year’s today. A fresh start, a new resolution, may be even a new dream. So hold my hand, and stand by me. Look sadness in the eye and walk into to the light. To survive is to endure and prosper; take an oath to survive. I don’t believe in petty resolutions. Things that you forget after you recover from the hangover. I know you want to survive. As I sit by my bed to say grace, I wish that you do the same.

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.

Hmmm – the most useless word in the English dictionary

I really want to find and beat up the guy that added the word [/sound] hmmm to the English dictionary. It adds nothing to a conversation at the same time signifying nothing. It could mean the person is just trying to grasp what you say, but more often than not just means the other person has nothing to contribute to the current discussion and wants you to either change the topic [without the other person contribution to the change, lazy as he/she is] or end the conversation. Repeated usages have caused more conversation to be ruined than any other word in the English dictionary. I just hate that word.

Doesn’t work automatically

Through our lives we share a diverse set of relationships with even a more diverse set of individuals. Some based out of the roles that we play [son, daughter, brother, sister, colleague, classmate, husband, wife] and some because of who we are [friends, partners, lovers]. The later are relationships we choose, relationships that are not bound by constraints of society; relationships that work because we want them to work and fail the day we stop caring.

The sad part of life is that the second set of relationships are the most difficult to maintain. You can play the role of a perfect sibling without thinking twice, it comes naturally. But to play the role of a meaningful and caring friend requires you to question “Is the person worth it?” These questions get even tougher when the relationship involved is that of a partner. The person is evaluated on everything at every occasion. Till the relationship moves from the second set to the first, it just keeps demanding more and more effort. And all it takes is one mistake, one inconsiderate thought, one act of indiscretion and months and even years of good deeds seem so insignificant. It’s really sad to see something so beautiful be so fragile.

Sometimes it’s not a mistake. It’s just lack of communication. Whether it’s between friends or between partners, most relationships fall through simple because they don’t spend enough time being a part of the others life. Distances, lifestyles, new people, current priorities etc are just some of the things that can contribute towards the spiral of a relationship towards its eventual doom. Not spending enough time letting the other know “hey I care about you? I care about how you’re doing.” has been the biggest reasons for the best of relationships to drift apart. None of us have time, with our busy schedules it’s impossible for even think about fitting others in our lives, isn’t it. It’s not that hard, try it.

“Partner” is probably the most beautiful relationship amongst the lot. It’s most enchanting part being the fact that it belongs in the second set, the fact that we are in this not because we have to be, but because we want to be. There are couples who are partners first, and spouses later. According to me, that is the best way to be. Every day or every thought might not give you a reason to be together, but every breath taking moment and every cherished memory should. Just like the world keeps hurling reasons at individuals for them to fail, there is no shortage of reasons for relationships to fail in this world either. They take a lot of effort but therein lay the reason for their existence – “because they’re worth it”

That also has a counterpart. What happens when you ask yourself “Is the other person worth it?” and can’t seem to get a positive answer. Some relationships are not meant to be, it’s better to let them die. But what’s important is to judge correctly whether the relationship is worth fighting for. To judge beyond current circumstances [which are as interim as the life span of a gastrotich], beyond current distances. Each relationship is beautiful and special, and one should only be put to rest if it’s truly beyond restoration and beyond resurrection. But the day a relationship reaches there, it’s time to let it go.