तू है कौन.... and Who do you think you are?

“I have heard this before,  मोटे आज तक तूने कितने प्लान बनाये होंगे, और कितने पूरे हुए?”

“एक और पिलान, अबे कभी तो ख्वाब देखना बंद कर |”

“करो एक बार, अच्छा experience रहेगा तुम्हारे लिए।  मगर कुछ नए ढंग से करो तो सही है, कर सकते हो तुम। तुम्ही कर सकते हो भाई!”

Some of the above lines, I was so used to hearing all my life, that even I started somewhat believing in them. What could be so so bad about taking an off for 6 months from your existing life? I agree its an absurd question to ask, how can someone take a vacation from life itself? But then the vacation is not from life, its from the way you are currently living.

What I kept asking was why shouldn’t I do it? More so, the most important question was Why should I do it? Reasons…

About an year back, I started getting tired of the life I was leading. There was more to what I should have been doing, there was more to what I should have done, and this feeling kept eating me day and night. I was tired.

What we tend to see of ourselves is how we are feeling at that very moment.

Don’t give a bloke something to eat for a day, and ask him the next day, Who are you? To hell with human, traveller, monk, friend, father, son, husband… his answer is going to be I am hungry.

So the answer to this question is not always who we actually are, but we have been feeling lately. Seldom do we give chance to our inner self to answer who we are. We start living the facade we put up to make our end meet.

Almost 11 months back I took a small vacation and went to meet some college friends. Those 8-9 days made me realise I was actually a Wanderer. Some where in the years that I lived, I had killed my wander lust, and forgotten about that murder. During those 8 days made me realise, visiting new places made me happy from within, made me feel giddy as a schoolboy, everything new I saw I could awesomeness in that. Every old thing I saw, I saw it with a new vision. I began to think, if 8 days could do this to me, what would 6 month do to my life?

Some people and their books suggest follow your passion and make a career out of it. Good advise, keep it to yourself I say to those mortals.

For one, your inner-self may not get all that gung-ho about your passion once you start making money out of it. Eventually all passions turn to mundane jobs, once you start earning from them. Ask any scriptwriter. Their passion is writing, every one wants to write good, except maybe me, I want to write to confuse everyone about what I want to say. So the script writers, they want to churn our good stories, but eventually do they get to? Writing was your passion, writing what is economically viable, your job.

Lets take another detailed example, A boy, say a teenager say 20 years ago, as of now, would be in his late thirties. This youth felt real happiness in helping everyone around him. Care and Nurturing were his pet peeves. He was lauded by all for his qualities. Eventually time came for him to choose his career, people, family, friends started suggesting various options. Since he wanted to help everyone so much, he decided to make a career in medicine. He started preparing for the entrance exams, got admission eventually in a reputed college, studied, got excellent grades, did everything to become a good doctor and fulfil his passion. With each successful passage of milestone, he also kept on piling on him, targets and expectations. Education loan, social pressures, family expectations. Somewhere deep he still wanted the same things he wanted a decade before. Studying medicine is not as easy as it seems, no way as easy as say Engineering. So when he was done with his graduation, he joined a specialisation course to further his chances of better employment. This whole time period of preparation, and finally landing up with a hospital or a private practise, say took him 15 years. Once he was well settled, he was asked to start a family, settle down socially as well. Being a good son and well trained, he gave in. Two decades since he first felt his passion, he is a successful doctor, has a flourishing practise, a good social position, is visiting a couple of well known hospitals, making money, treating patients to the best of his abilities. On the other hand, he has targets, monthly installments to be paid, fees of his children, shopping of his wife. Personal Targets. He gets tied down so much in these that these become his life. His hospital gives him monthly targets, he has to see x number of patients, has to bring in Y amount in revenue for them. His expenditures are Z, which he has to meet anyhow.

That is what his life is now. That has what happened to his passion. Treating everyone is just another activity he does, he isn’t finding actually happiness in it. He is starting to get tired. Eventually say 5 years down the line, he would be very far off from his initial reason to become a doctor, but he would be successful, maybe unhappy down within, but very successful as per everyone.

I know this is not a typical story, for each such an episode, there are thousands of doctors, who would not have reached even half of this. But then a lot more people can identify with this situation. I can see around, there are many people likely to find themselves in a situation like this.

The original passion got lost somewhere, under the burden of very life, he chose because of his passion.

What starts as an Idea, ends up being our unwanted responsibility, slowly and steadily, inching towards unbearable.

It was a dream job, dream office, dream colleagues, that I was planning to leave behind. But then I was sure enough I wan’t killing those relations. What I would propose to the very people, would be childish for some, foolish and maybe a great idea for some as well.

What was important was, what was it for me? It was something that I wanted to be, I wanted to do, because deep down I was a simple little traveller, since long forgotten to walk the new path. And now the more I think about it, the more I realise, this was what I was meant to do.

What started as a feeling of running away, gave way to the actual realisation that I wanted to see new things in life, look beyond what I was being shown, go the distance to find what mesmerised me.

Just so the running away, looking beyond and all the realisation scares you, its not about euthanasia, actually running away as in the 70’s cinema, or joining some religious cult etc, this was a simple running away from the existing days I was spending and how I was spending them.

All I am talking about it actually asking ourselves the question, Who am I? Time and again, and rising up from what we are feeling currently, and sinking deeper into our true self.