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So I was home this week after three months and had a period for reflection. A period of silent introspection.
“Life is tough.” That's our favorite phrase these days. Whenever we think about promotions, university admissions for PG courses, dating, love in general and everything else related to life, we conclude it’s tough. Not beautiful, not wonderful, not hopeful. But tough. Tough because we can't stop thinking about what's coming our way. Tough because we spent the past 2-3 years in denial, in denial that we are growing up. In denial that we want to make it big but don't know how. The confusing moments in our life soon became moments of denial. Those vague ideas about the "real" world are now so in-your-face that you've lost sight of the greatness you once dreamed of.
Then you find a diary from your school and college days, a diary which had about 12-13 poems that you had written and thought you will publish it some day. Then you read those poems, most of them written after your break up. The memories of the relationship seems too silly now. But the words, they punch you right in the face. It seems strange that you were so possessed about something. You had so much clarity and intent. You get inspired that you could feel so strongly about something that wasn’t a variable or class name (Software Engineers will get it.)
And then you realise that something went wrong. But what? Then you think of what you wanted to be back in school. You wanted to be a cricketer. Then you see IPL, you see Nitish rana. He was born two years after you. He is tonking sixes at will against the world’s best bowlers and you? You keep solving some bug that crops up every now and then. Right around 7th or 8th, when you were a silver medalist in gymnastics and a district level cricketer, You had a choice to either take up sports or get into studies and be a doctor/engineer. And you thought, there are like 5k people that get into IIT only 11 get into indian team, and by that time no Indian gymnast had been to olympics. Thanks to deepa it changed. But still the numbers were too low to take a decision that could potentially change my life for the better or worse. And being decently good at studies is a curse too. You had a choice, and being the analytic person that education had taught you to be, you decide to try and get into an IIT. In 10th you realise its a race, it’s a race that will destroy you irrespective of whether you come first or you come last. It will drain you mentally , but you participate anyway. You think you will make the world a better place with all that knowledge. That you will perhaps change the world. Fast forward a few years, you look back. You did decently well at the race. Didn’t finish first, I don’t know who does, but you did well. But then you get to it, are you changing the world? No. Probably not. Will you be able to change the world? Probably not. You did well in the race, but you still lost.
Maybe you were not meant to change the world. Maybe you were meant to sit on that half reclining chair solve bugs and ship features. Not that latter is not challenging, it is, but you aren’t changing the world for the better. Even if you do it’s too negligible for a child sitting in a village waiting for his mother to cook a meal for which she doesn’t have any resources or raw materials. Then you have a guilt trip, and you donate money in charity hoping it would help someone and then forget about it until the time you file tax, where any donation is not a taxable income.
You are 25, you want to change the world for the better, and you have no clue on how to go about it. Maybe you will figure it out in next 5 years. Maybe you won’t, but hopefully you will strive to change the world then as you want to do it now, as you wanted to do it 5 years earlier.
Life is not tough. In this rat race you tend to forget about how beautiful it is. You don’t see the inherent good in people, you become harsh to others including yourself. You tend to forget the pristine beauty of life apart from the desk you have. The beauty in a mother’s eyes when she sees her baby for the first time. Or a the beauty on the face of an anxious groom standing at altar, waiting for his bride. And in the end we forget:
“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting. Beauty is power; a smile is its sword. The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express. The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.”
So smile and may be it will change someone else’s world :)
