Desires, Goals and Life.
(Written in the Spring of 2017)
I wanted to be a doctor. A pediatrician to be precise. I didn’t become one.
Then, I wanted to be an Automobile Engineer. I loved cars and designing them on paper. I changed my mind towards the end of my engineering education.
I wanted to join a top B-School right after graduation, join a Fortune 500 company and become super rich before I was 25. I didn’t clear the entrance exams on my first attempt and was in no mood to try again any time soon. (And ended up joining a bookstore)
I wanted to build the bookstore business into a worldwide chain that would rival Amazon one day. I quit and moved on in three years.
There, now this would make for a killer start to my biography (or auto-biography if no one wants to write about me in 20–30 years). It will be Chetan Bhagat and Jeffrey Archer steam-rolled into one masterpiece.
There are times when I feel disheartened and let down by my past choices. I do wonder whether I will ever ‘make it’ in life. The funniest part is that I know deep within me that I WILL make it if I set my heart, mind and soul to anything that I want to achieve. But the part that both, frees me as well as scares me, at the same time, is the question that has been staring me in the face ever since I began the last formal education of my life nine months ago — WHAT do I want to achieve in life?
When I was little, I knew I wanted to help people, to create a better world for them. I was inspired by doctors, the selfless nature of their work (my young mind was quite uncorrupted back then) and the way they could just ‘heal’ people. The first ever doctors I interacted with were my Valliamma (my mom’s elder sister) and my pediatrician. Both were simply amazing people. I think I fell sick so often in school just so I could visit my doctor. I enjoyed watching him work. (Plus I hated school, so missing it was another silver lining of being a few Fahrenheits above the magic number of 98.4). And I remember the times when Valliamma would come home or when I visited her. I loved playing with her stethoscope and treating others (mostly my younger brother) as my patients. Things finally got real when we had to choose subjects, to specialize in, in Class XI. I had no second thoughts in choosing Science with Biology. There was this new stream being offered called Science with Economics. I gave it a fleeting thought (an epiphany of sorts would have been nice) but it was not attractive enough to let go off my dream of becoming a doctor. Commerce was not even a choice. Now when I look back, I realize that the decisions I thought I was making after careful consideration were just notional, born out of simple intuition. I never researched anything. I would listen to my classmates talking about ‘careers’ and ‘options’. But I never liked to think too much. I always did things because I felt like doing them. Logical reasoning was never my forte.
I soon realised that working hard in my studies was also not my forte. I could not mug up things just for the sake of mugging up things. Even though life was based on as little logic as possible, when it came to knowledge and learning, I enjoyed logic. I loved working out problems in Mathematics (except the madness that was geometry). I liked Physics. I knew I wanted to like and enjoy Biology but the amount of mugging up required to be done for medical entrances was just not my cup of tea. I knew it when school ended but I also knew that I needed to take a year off, take a break and figure things out. That’s where my intuition and gut-feel really helped me I think. Taking a year off after school was one of the best irrational decisions I have ever made in my life. I have elaborated on that in other infamous blogs so I’ll skip the emotional atyachaar in this one.
So yes, I obviously couldn’t bring myself around to study like a madman and clear the medical entrances even on my second attempt, but I knew my Math and cleared a couple of engineering entrances. So I realized that life was leading me to my ‘other’ true love — Automobiles. I so enjoyed the idea of being a designer, making cars, creating futuristic models and impressing the world with my craziness. But soon I realized that this involved learning weird software like Autocad and Catia. Again, these challenges brought out the worst in me. I remember going to summer training programs with two of my friends and pissing them off with my completely weird attitude towards tough situations. It was quite funny actually. When I couldn’t understand a concept or ‘funda’ that others seemingly understood easily, I took it in the worse way possible. Funnier part was my ego — I didn’t ask any one for help! Ever! I got mad at myself for being such a nincompoop. Then I got mad with others and withdrew into my shell. Every single day this was repeated. Every single place. It was horrible but I did not realize then that I was responsible for my emotions. I always thought it was someone else’s fault. Anyway, so I completed my engineering with good grades (I am good with presentations and so lazy profs correcting my answer sheets thought I was a genius) but a beaten down morale. I didn’t want to be part of any kind of engineering or design work.
One good thing that emerged from my engineering was that I had started managing teams, groups and projects for the first time in my life during my days as a graduate student. I enjoyed it thoroughly and enrolled for management entrance examination classes. In my first attempt right after my engineering, I didn’t get the requisite grades to get through top B-schools. I was back at square one. Another degree down, another dream undreamt and another goal unmet. But this time I knew I wanted to start working and not start studying again. Thankfully, I decided to pursue this new-found skill of management. I decided I would start at the grassroots level. May be work at McDonalds, wait tables at some restaurant, work at a library or just work at a bookstore. I wanted to do something that involved physical as well as mental work. I don’t really know why I wanted to do that but again, logic was not part of life in general. It was tough to explain my feelings to my family (Again, another blog might have covered this in much more detail) but I went through with it. Working at the bookstore was amazing. I learned A LOT! And I dreamed a lot. I think the problem was that I knew what needed to be done through my “gut-feel” but never really had the personality, the conviction or the educational foundation for my feelings to be actually able to make sense to others.
After three and a half years of absolute mayhem, I moved on. But this time it was to a place of learning. A place where I was part of something really amazing. Part of a cute little group of students made up of learners and thinkers from various nationalities. A place where I am being formally educated as part of the Indian education system, one last time (My family hopes).
But I have to say that the past ten months have enlightened me in so many ways. A new form of ‘me’ has slowly emerged. One that is resilient, more disciplined than ever, stronger, brighter, calmer and most importantly, genuine. This me is more open and more comfortable with its inner self than all other past me’s put together. That in itself is the biggest achievement and I am proud of my young self to have stayed strong through everything. The mind is a crazy piece of advanced equipment. I had one that was programmed to self-destruct at the smallest trigger. How it has managed to evolve into the one I have now is in itself an achievement.
I have still been grappling with that question on ‘WHAT’ I want to achieve in life and am still no wiser to where I really want to drive this little boat of mine. But I have learned the importance of continuing to grow, continuing to learn and better my own self. Finding oneself is one of the toughest and most rewarding journeys we will ever undergo in life. And I have been trying to tell myself that it is okay to continue to move ahead even if the destination is unclear because sometimes getting lost is the only way of finding ourselves. (And I am getting pretty good at getting lost).
Tada.