How we take the fixed path to success

Were you born in India? The chances are that your life will be decided before you were born. Your parents will send you to a “good school” with “good teachers”. Your initial years at the school will be fun because you are young and have no responsibility. Before you know it, you reach middle school and you are supposed to get serious about studies. If not, you are put into tuition. And when you reach high school, some wacked up parents (thankfully not mine) put you into coaching classes for competitive exams (Note how I am not naming these exams, but we all know them too well). Then you reach that phase where everything is made to seem like a life and death situation where you cannot have fun. This is because you have to become an engineer or a doctor or an accountant. That is just unfair! I mean, you are 17. How do you know what to do with the rest of your life when you are not considered responsible enough to come home after 7.30 PM? How do you know you have found your passion when you are not ‘considered responsible’? How in god’s name are you supposed to put your foot down and say –Hey, this is what I want to do with the rest of my life! But all that doesn’t matter. You will eventually grow into the fat salary ass who will sit at home and say the same things to your children because ‘the safe path is a successful path’. Well don’t! Safe path is not necessarily a happy path.

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life” ~ John Lennon

Two Banks Of A River

Imagine a serene, calm river that houses many forms of aquatic life. The river is perpetually flowing between two banks facing each other. I am on one bank of that river and you, are probably on the other bank. I pride that my bank has more fertile soil and hence, the better of the two banks you might just do the same (or you maybe cleverer than me and see the big picture). I know I am just being conceited and that is probably one of my big weakness. Probably all I ever had to do was just travel to the opposite side. Maybe I would have liked it, maybe adored it, maybe not but atleast I have seen it for myself. Then I would have been a better judge. Instinct can sometimes be a dangerous thing if you go only by its verdict. Sometimes, you have to travel and start accepting what you have been avoiding. It might just take you those few extra steps across the bridge to make that fascninating journey. These steps could be the walk of your life and just, maybe just make you a better person. I'd like to quote Miriam Beard here who has said

"Certainly travel is more than the seeing of sights;it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living"


Its hard to accept that you can have a bottle of worms inside you. But at this very moment, I am reminded of hearing someone counselling about undesirable effects of ego. He/She had said EGO stands for "Edging God Out". Atheists can have their own expansion but I hope the point is understood. I don't know about you but this for me is surely one big epiphany! Its one of those moments in life where you are overwhelmed at a discovery you have made that you feel like sharing it with the world. What better way than a blog to do it! Since someone has already used "Eureka" before me and has been more famous :). And also, because this is my first blog I think I'll dedicate this to two people who have bore the maximum brunt of my short sightedness. They know who they are :). Finally, I feel liberated and satisfied and most of all, proud for having made this journey.