As I set out on a journey of reflecting upon the plethora of twists and turns life has presented throughout, an oft-quoted dictum reverberates at the back of my mind, “You can’t blend in when you are born to stand out.” And what utility does a complacent life offer? Nothing, right! Ultimately, life should be the process of realising those aims that direct you towards establishing a distinguished individuality and innate uniqueness, simultaneously carving out a niche for yourself in the ever-so ephemeral environment. This piece primarily focusses upon a range of perspectives that constantly evolve as a result of experiences galore in motion, here my undergrad and the decision to pursue MBA and the transition in-between.
It happens quite often in life, that you happen to be in the middle of something really amazing – but in the race to stay in there, you forget this fact – this feeling of being a part of this amazing thing – and the rare occasion when the realisation hits, you feel guilty for having lived life without having felt this for so long. The under-graduation journey feels like a verbatim testimony to the stated idea. No doubt, it’s an amazingly crafted journey, it defines you, it refines you, it dares you, it describes you. In fact, for most of us, the under-grad journey is a veritable path from naivety to sensibility, aloofness to exposure, pretence to humility, gullibility to prudence and an overall self-discovery by a cumulated effect of all that matters to us, more or less. Yes! It’s quite true that my under-graduation journey encompassed all these aspects and was a roller-coaster, when it comes to the range of learnings I had, the range of emotions that I encountered and the sheer number of really talented people I met, meeting whom I consider as an utter chance of fate. And, putting it simply, it becomes really tough a task to quantify all the things I gained out of my under-graduation journey but in totality, it was and will always be an enlightening experience for me. Frankly, I had my own share of achievements and failures, but the learning curve always kept on rising. Remember, in life, your own successes may not always be justified through a self-serving bias, it’s equally important to pay gratitude to all those who have been a part of your eventful journey, for these are the people worth holding onto, these are your ‘permanents’! Talking about failures, I handled them simply, I used to reflect upon what went wrong and a bound transcript would use to play soothingly in my mind, which said, “You have to realise that there are times when things are not in your hands-concretely. And that impatience is not going to hasten the process of getting ‘there’, wherever ‘that’ is. Remember, you are 21. Gargantuan feats are achieved with a lot of efforts put into it, thoughts alone take you nowhere.”
So, the question of the hour, after an enriching journey like the one I had, why go for another exalted journey which would again be a hectic schedule of sorts tied to a myriad of processes again, the learnings, the people and the achievements. Don’t you really feel tired, already? Why do you always have to run? Well, the answer is pretty simple. Because “Running is inherent to human nature.” You thought, I would take you on another philosophical journey. Didn’t you? It’s not life until you’ve run your part. Don’t worry how far you can go, it’s never going to be far enough! But, run not because you have to, run to change, run to accept, run to accede, run because we are humans at the end of the day. See, there is a thing about closures. We all seek it. We seek the end of things and the beginning of new things. I am somewhere, caught in the transition, figuring things out at my own pace. And, when that particular moment of epiphany dawns upon me, “yours truly” would surely be at your service. Until then, let’s just be in the race, not with others, but with ourselves.