About our Priorities in Life…
From seconds to minutes, hours to days, weeks to months and years to a lifetime… during our course of life we keep count of smaller time units only to end up with larger ones, accompanied with nothing but an ever increasing anxiety. We ask ourselves, ‘What am I to become in life?’, ‘What next?’ Some of us try to dissolve this discomfort into our lungs or liver, while some give up and assume that a happy family is the only thing that their future self would need in life, let alone job-satisfaction. To realize wherein your happiness and satisfaction lies needs patience and a lot of courage.
Years ago I entered my college as an Engineering Undergrad that too by choice. Later, I became a rebel, but by digression. I was evidently not an engineering material, thus there wasn’t a day when I didn’t remind myself of my folly. Such mistakes are irreversible and often bring with them long lasting effects. But whether those effects extended to my lifetime or the four years of my college, was my choice.
I remember my moment of truth during Basant {The Alumni Reunion of IIT{ISM}) when I was in EDC, {A Guest House in IIT(ISM)} on the floor, sitting as a Murga.
It went something like this:
Alumni: ‘Your plans for summer vacations?’
Me: ‘Branch Training’
Alumni: ‘Interested in it?’
Me: ‘Lol, No! I love content writing! But CV matters, I guess.’
Alumni: ‘Murga!’.
The other voice was already successful enough to afford the complete range of Apple products in a single go keeping all his materialistic and bodily possessions intact. That summer I ended up interning in a famous start-up as a content marketer.
Since then, I engaged myself into a tryst with life and turned my rebellion into a choice. Now I juggle my engineering course along with whatever inspires my action and makes me happy. The only limits I have set since then is that I never accept failure. Yet, surprisingly my anxiety is still intact! Not even a flinch! On the other side it has changed its form into a more demonic one because now I don’t have job security. To deal with this, I gradually trained my mind to learn from anything and everything I came across.
Yesterday I met a rare breed of engineer, a dropout by choice. That too from an Upper Caste… CSE. During his 2 years as an engineering student, he realized that college ‘was gradually killing the creativity and ingenuity that his coding skills were infused with’ and thus he chose his passion over his future pension. Being a freelancer since the age of 15, his projects started fetching him up to `20,000 per interface/software just after he dropped out of college. It has been 2 years since then, and after a brief duration of working full-time as a designer and a developer, he is about to co-found a start-up with the CEO of the same company in which he worked. Pretty cool, right? Well he never got the flattery of being an IITian as we do from our relatives or its other unrealized perks that we all share. Yet he is an independent man today of about the same age as we ‘kids’ are. And by the time we shall become successful ‘men’, the likes of his might be hiring us. Did you realize his key of success?
Setting priorities right.
The short encounter with this person made me realize the importance of setting priorities and how crucial it is in our day to day life. We all have reached a stage where we know about our interests…but we are just too ignorant to pursue them. And it seems that from this stage of life and onwards, focusing on something requires our undivided attention to it rather than making it our subject of forceful scrutiny. 20th May, 2017…you will never encounter this day again in the future; treat it like it deserves to be treated; make it count by setting your priorities right. Do this for the coming days of your life as well. Stop living your life based on other people’s expectations and let the curtains roll. This might take more courage and patience than you expect it to, but the results would be downright impeccable!
With love,
Until next time,
Team TEDxIITDhanbad.
Devil's Advocacy 