Laying no claim to be original, I firmly believe that life is all about making "your" choices and setting "your priorities"....but this one has been eluding for quite some time and I doubt if this post helps me get any closer to resolving it.
Looking back at the last four and a half years (since I moved out of Ranchi), I am a completely different person. I have pursued two years of education in a reasonably fine b-school, worked for an year in a large set-up and have spent a year and a half thereafter with a start-up. I have interacted with a world full of people and ideas during this period. I am wiser, less brash, more structured - and many such things which are supposed attributes of an educated person.
Obviously, not everything has been as nice - I have grown older, fatter (read less skinny), balder and my eye sight has been degenerating. How I wish there were a way to grow wiser without growing old! Now that may sound to you like a desire for a biochemical substance which can prevent senescence (more commonly known as ageing). But it is not, as I will elucidate later.
Now talking of those 4.5 years - the experience has been truly amazing. While I mean all respect to all my colleagues and classmates, I have reasons to believe that I have made a lot (not financially of course) during this period. Partly because I started with a very low base and partly because I have had that fire of sorts in my belly. The fire that keeps me hungry, that keeps motivating me to never stop learning, that pushes me to keep "growing". So seen from a prism of continuous self-improvement, the journey has been a tremendous one.
But the question - whether it was worth it or not - merits evaluating the "worth" of what was spent/ lost during the entire exercise. I lost 4.5 vital years that I could have spent with my parents, being by there side and having them by my side.
Assuming I work for say 15 years before going crazy, I would have spent the 15 most productive and potential years of my life (say about 20% of my life time) working for others and staying away from my grass roots. Now that statement seems to be making an assumption that I am not happy working for others. This would always be case-specific and given the title of my post, I would presume people are in jobs they like and since they are working on something they like, they are bound to succeed.
And obviously enough, human civilization wouldn't have reached the heights of progress it has if every person were to stick to his roots instead of moving out in quest of knowledge & learning followed by periods of contributing to the society and to that body of knowledge (through academics, through research & innovation or through job-creation via entrepreneurship).
So for human progress, it's absolutely imperative that the brightest minds go to the brightest universities of the world to join/ start great organizations which shall turn out great products & services. In the process, those minds would make a lot of money, marry great minds, bear kids and have a happy life. So seen this time from the prism of the day's society, it would again mean a lot of success.
And then there is this kid - who's probably not adding as much value to the society through his high-value job, but does an okay work in his father's small scale business. And he does it not because he was not capable of pursuing quality higher education away from home. He does it because that is the choice he makes. And he could probably be very proud of that choice.
But the lives that we are all living - we are marching towards "success" - and success as they say tastes sweet.
But is it sweeter than staying home?
Or is it better to have a time-bound plan (if making and executing one were that easy) to grow, succeed and then return home to taste the other sweet?
Or is staying put in our present lives - where most of us are out there to succeed - the best thing to do?
It depends.......
And more likely than not, we will have our preference order for these 3 things 20-30 years from now. And at that time, I just hope (and pray) that ex-post, the 1st preference we discover would be the same one that each one of us have lived rather than the one that most of us has let go.
There's another way of doing it though - growing wiser before growing old - no, not to fight ageing but to know if it'll all be worth it at the end of the day!
Looking back at the last four and a half years (since I moved out of Ranchi), I am a completely different person. I have pursued two years of education in a reasonably fine b-school, worked for an year in a large set-up and have spent a year and a half thereafter with a start-up. I have interacted with a world full of people and ideas during this period. I am wiser, less brash, more structured - and many such things which are supposed attributes of an educated person.
Obviously, not everything has been as nice - I have grown older, fatter (read less skinny), balder and my eye sight has been degenerating. How I wish there were a way to grow wiser without growing old! Now that may sound to you like a desire for a biochemical substance which can prevent senescence (more commonly known as ageing). But it is not, as I will elucidate later.
Now talking of those 4.5 years - the experience has been truly amazing. While I mean all respect to all my colleagues and classmates, I have reasons to believe that I have made a lot (not financially of course) during this period. Partly because I started with a very low base and partly because I have had that fire of sorts in my belly. The fire that keeps me hungry, that keeps motivating me to never stop learning, that pushes me to keep "growing". So seen from a prism of continuous self-improvement, the journey has been a tremendous one.
But the question - whether it was worth it or not - merits evaluating the "worth" of what was spent/ lost during the entire exercise. I lost 4.5 vital years that I could have spent with my parents, being by there side and having them by my side.
Assuming I work for say 15 years before going crazy, I would have spent the 15 most productive and potential years of my life (say about 20% of my life time) working for others and staying away from my grass roots. Now that statement seems to be making an assumption that I am not happy working for others. This would always be case-specific and given the title of my post, I would presume people are in jobs they like and since they are working on something they like, they are bound to succeed.
And obviously enough, human civilization wouldn't have reached the heights of progress it has if every person were to stick to his roots instead of moving out in quest of knowledge & learning followed by periods of contributing to the society and to that body of knowledge (through academics, through research & innovation or through job-creation via entrepreneurship).
So for human progress, it's absolutely imperative that the brightest minds go to the brightest universities of the world to join/ start great organizations which shall turn out great products & services. In the process, those minds would make a lot of money, marry great minds, bear kids and have a happy life. So seen this time from the prism of the day's society, it would again mean a lot of success.
And then there is this kid - who's probably not adding as much value to the society through his high-value job, but does an okay work in his father's small scale business. And he does it not because he was not capable of pursuing quality higher education away from home. He does it because that is the choice he makes. And he could probably be very proud of that choice.
But the lives that we are all living - we are marching towards "success" - and success as they say tastes sweet.
But is it sweeter than staying home?
Or is it better to have a time-bound plan (if making and executing one were that easy) to grow, succeed and then return home to taste the other sweet?
Or is staying put in our present lives - where most of us are out there to succeed - the best thing to do?
It depends.......
There's another way of doing it though - growing wiser before growing old - no, not to fight ageing but to know if it'll all be worth it at the end of the day!
