Living out your priorities

This episode is inspired in part by the story of a close friend who has been in a constant struggle with his emotional composure for the past year or so and the rest by a midnight group discussion in the office premises with a bunch of confused colleagues and/or friends that lasted for almost four hours amidst high-running emotions…

Well let’s start with a question! How many of us exactly know what we want to be seen as, say a decade down the line? When I ask that question, I am strictly referring to the professional aspect of life. Very few ‘Yes’ answers I expect and out of those few, how many are really in a place where they are actually taking some effort as a part of the game plan to accomplish what they want? This time I expect only a handful to stand up! Now I guess it’s easier to figure why so many of us hate our jobs… We all know that we Do Not want to do what we currently are doing but very few of us know what it is that we want to do! I am definitely not one of those few…..

The modern India has so become that the so called Generation Next of fast thinkers with big dreams and strong ideologies end up working in jobs that seldom puts the mind to work. And it is not that they don’t realize that this is what is happening to them and perhaps, that is the sole reason that they want to leave the place that they are in right now. But then what is it that is stopping them from doing the same? No prizes for guessing the answers….Money! Every person with some amount of maturity and experience in life knows that money is not everything in life. But still it ends up being the deciding factor when it comes to selecting the kind of life that we want to live…

The emotional trauma that every Indian youngster in the age group of 20-30 goes through in establishing the career that they have planned for themselves is unbelievable and nobody knows whether they will actually end up being what they want or the combined pressure of social pressure and the stronghold of money will force them to compromise… or even worse… make them believe that this is what they wanted in life and create an illusion where they forget what they planned in the first place..

A small brief on what goes through in the mind of an average person in our target population who have just completed their education and landed up in a job because that is the only thing that they were programmed to do ever since they can recall… “Here is what I am going to do. Get into the job that I want to in the next one year or so (which will for sure be a high paid job!!!) then work hard (by working hard, I mean for 100 odd hours on average over a week) for the next 10 years, I make the money that I wanted, and then I leave the job and take up a much lower-profile job, both in terms of money and the insane work hours, and then I will carry out all my passions of life for I will have the financial strength to back it up… (The passion may vary from person to person from travelling, adventure sports, photography, art or just being content with a family). Perfect!! Sounds like a plan…”

But will it really work that way?? Given that it is a high paid job, where you make so much money that you have gotten used to a lifestyle that cannot be altered so easily, how many of us will have the maturity and courage to stand up and say that this is it! Let’s stop here and do all the other things I wanted… Will that moment of dawn ever come? Will we not have reasons throughout life to stop us from taking up our dreams…? Giving the best to the people who love you, fame, power, money or in an improbable case, falling in love with your job, and many more millions of excuses that will convince us to say, “Let me just stay in the job for another couple of years!” And probably this “couple” will turn into a decade and by the time you sit one day to think of those dreams that you wanted to realize, they would actually have become just a dream!!!

Guess the ideal time to live those out is never going to come, however strong your “game plan”!! So well…what’s the conclusion??? For me (and you all are allowed to make your opinions and share as well if you are interested!), there is never going to be a time to “live life”. It’s now! Your career may pan out the way you want in a few years or it may not. But to live out the aspects of life that you call as your dream or passion... this is the time. Let’s at least make an effort to kick start today! At least I am not going to wait for the right time to come :)

The city of hope

What is about Mumbai that is so different from the rest of the cities in India? Is it just a worldly image created by Bollywood, or is it really, like the people of Mumbai keep referring to, a city of dreams? Earlier I used to dismiss the argument as a useless one since, I, for one, hated this city. Close to a year now and still the feeling has shifted only from intolerable to somewhat bearable… Mind you, there is nothing particularly wrong with Mumbai for it is very similar to most of the Indian metros that I have visited in the general aspects. But when I came here, I left behind a place full of memories….the city that has given me everything-my personality, strength, freedom and beyond all that, a bunch of friends that is irreplaceable.

Every day I encounter an argument with my colleagues, that usually takes the same pattern. A couple of us on one side defending my home turf that is Delhi and a bunch of others supporting Mumbai. (There are a few in support of other metros as well but they are a minority and generally lose out!!!) Though the argument is unfounded and baseless, it at least triggered a thought in the line of whether one of these two cities is actually better than the other. The love affair with Delhi is like a predictable story…a comfortable companion that you have grown up with, the city has a charm and a force about it that is so magnetic that it is a pride in calling yourself a tough-to-handle, “I don’t care” attitude Delhiite!!! This is an obvious side of the story. But the hatred for Mumbai…well, that is biased for sure! Biased from the mindset that a place that does not have your family and friends is unacceptable as a place worth living….

From the outside, Mumbai just looks like a crowded city, with an enormous cost of living, where the density of population is increasing at an astronomical speed given that a small village size of people get added to this city everyday. As a friend of mine pointed out to me today, it is a city that has welcomed so many strangers with outstretched arms, that has made so many dreams come alive and that teaches you how to be someone on your own. The people here do not care for their neighbours; well… they don’t even know who their neighbours are!!! Because everyone is so busy running after a wild goose chase, trying to make their destiny that it becomes a crime to waste your time on socializing, specially when there is no personal gain out of it!

But is all this the fault of Mumbai? Is this the Mumbai culture? Apparently not! Take a few steps back and look at the people running that frenzied race… They are the same kind of people as I am… the people who chose Mumbai to build a career in this city and while doing so left their beloved homes. All of us have a shared hatred for this city just because it’s not our home and we take the frustration out by not wanting to mix with the people whose only sin is apparently that they are not from your city!!! So, this culture of selfishness is built by the refugees who have come here. The real Mumbai still lives the same way as every other city. This city has actually been generous enough to allow the people from across the country to come here, get a life, learn to live, and then spoil its culture and reputation as well! This generosity is in turn being viewed as degradation of social norms!!!! What an irony that is….

Just take a walk along the Marine Drive at 2AM in the night looking at the lights that are often referred to as queen’s necklace… Just keep watching the waves that hit the rocks on the Nariman Point… Just stand near the Land’s end in Bandra and look at the sea link… And you would realize that it is indeed a city of hopes… At least I did!