You should get settled in life.
Study hard so you can get a good degree.
Be an engineer, a doctor, a chartered accountant or at the very least, at least an MBA!!!
Work hard so you can get a good job.
Keep working so you can get a good salary.
Get settled. Get married. Have kids.
Get your own home. That guy is getting ahead.
Enter home loan, car loan, this loan and the other loan.
Now repeat this story with your kids. Get them settled too.
Sounds familiar? I am sure it does…
Ever since I remember language, I remember these words, “Get settled in life.”
Interestingly though ever since I remember my beginning to question myself, I understood the meaning of get settled in life.
What does it mean?
For those of us nicely settled down in life, this is what it really means:
Settle for the second best (or worse) in life? Don’t’ you dare try to be the best in life? And don’t you even dare to think of pursuing anything you associate passion with.
I can guarantee you with absolute certainty that as an 18-year-old passionate adult with a belief of your own, you wanted to be someone else, someone other than the person whose visiting card has your name on it.
That’s sad.
Why did it happen? After all getting settled isn’t a bad thing to do. I mean there is nothing wrong with being 2nd best too.
Well, that’s right. Nothing wrong. It disturbs you because you know you could have been more.
Our parents, our teachers, our elders, whoever it is that urged us to get settled in life, did it for one reason and one reason only – they didn’t want us to fail. Rather they didn’t want to see us failing. Or rather, they wouldn’t know what they will do if we failed (after all they didn’t fail).
In the name of getting settled, getting an income going, taking on family responsibility or whatever it is you told your revolting brain, you accepted being 2nd best (probably a lot worse). You accepted mediocrity. You probably made peace with it too as you went along. You probably told yourself and reinforced beliefs such as, ‘that’s the way life is’, ‘I sacrificed for my family’, ‘I wasn’t good enough to be a dancer, musician, cricketer, film star, writer……’, ‘my realities didn’t permit’……. Blah blah blah blah blah…..
I don’t care what you told yourself. No one at 18 is good enough for that. You weren’t good enough then for what you are today anyway.
You got settled. And you got settled to embrace mediocrity. And you have been embracing it ever since.
My friend, there is just one life. It ain’t coming back. When will you live?
Getting settled?
Uhhh! let’s reserve it for the grave.
There’s a life to live here.
When you have accepted to get settled in life, there are two things that happen,
One – your life is constantly guided by ‘avoidance of pain’. Meaning that your actions are motivated or guided by instances and things that will help you avoid any pain or failure. You are not guided by the pleasure that an opportunity may bring upon you, the pain that the failure may cause you guides you.
Even today the thoughts will cross your mind and I know it does, to do something bigger, something better, to live fuller, to go travel, to be ‘you’… That’s wonderful in imagination. But then you open your eyes and turn your back on these thoughts and get back on your desk. With eyes wide opened what did you see that guided you? You saw the pain of losing status quo!! What id the other one doesn’t work? What if I fail? How will I manage this? My responsibilities. My this. My that.
You are more inspired by avoiding the pain that may or may not occur than even giving yourself a shot at pleasure. That in fact was a reason for accepting mediocrity in the first place. It continues years later to be your light. It will continue and one fine day you will fade away after a very long but a very unlived settled life.
Two – you will constantly be guided by other people’s demands. Check this out. Your decision to get settled was another person’s demand. You cannot (will not) take the risk to go do and be who you want to be. In your second best option, there is still someone for whose best option is being pursued through you. To his or her demands, you will succumb every-time. You will have be guided, pulled and be compelled to adjust yourself to it. This happens everyday, at work, at home.
Here are 4 signs that may indicate that you have settled in life, whether in a relationship or a job or life:
Wishing away time: Cant wait for lunch? For work to finish? For weekend? Or at home for Weekend to finish? If you loved what you did, you wouldn’t wish away time.
Finding it hard to wake up in the morning: When you are living life, you are excited about the joy of possibilities that the day will bring in to you, and at that moment no one can snooze the alarm.
Dreaming of a completely different life: I am personally happy if you are at least doing this. Dreaming of something completely different is a sign that the current one isn’t fulfilling.
Distractions: how much of your time gets spend in distractions? – alcohol, shopping, movies, drugs, sex, mindless parties, mindless travel…..
Get UNSETTLED in life. Settling down hasn’t brought you any great joy or happiness, at least no the best of it. And you deserve the best. Creator sent you to this world not to be mediocre.
Yes your mind will show you images of things that will go wrong. I know you have to think about family, lifestyle, or some other crap. Yes its true but you got to embrace the temporary failure, the temporary loss to get the ultimate joy.
In fact the problem of settling has been the problem of not experiencing failure. I would say that if you haven’t experienced failure, then what the hell have you done in life?
Move on.
There is still only one life. It is passing you by.
Unsettle. Please do.
Yours,
Chetan Walia.
No comments:
Post a Comment