Lose Control

No, it's nothing to do with the RDB smash hit number except maybe for the fact that I can relate more to the College ke andar hum zindagi ko nachaate hain, College ke bahar zindagi hum ko nachaati hai .. quote. It's been a feeliing that has been prevalent for quite some time now. Why am I doing what I am doing.

Call it a repercussion of not getting what was my first choice as life after graduation, or the fact that throughout my life I have never been very good at anything. Nothing seems to excite me for long and it spans all realms of my known world from computer science to geography (my favourite sublect in school), from literature to music. I have never been able to master any thing, never gained supreme authority even over one small topic; not one musical instument, not one author, not one language (and this includes english, hindi and bengali). Until now it didn't matter, or maybe it did but I didn't feel it. Till yesterday my familiarity with most things was my strength. Today, viewed from a different angle I feel shallow. Suddenly I am not sure what I want to do with my life.

Do I want to be software engineer (actually I am already supposed to be one). Do I want to be an investment banker. Do I give CAT this year. What if I don't like management and fail miserably. What about a job change. Do I actually want to do a job, any job. If not then what. Why can't I do something else.

All those "Where do you see yourself 5/10 years down the line......" questions seem to make so much sense now. Here I am sitting in my office with nothing much to do, spending most of the day surfing the net, chatting and reading some documents, wondering, is this what I am meant to do, is this my life. It's not that I despise it. That would have made things easier. Worse, I am nowhere close to the solution. I have seen my batchmates and fellow bloggers follow this path of introspection throughout their professional career (which is one year) and get nowhere near the answer. Then again sometimes I let go of all this and say to myself "What the hell, just do what comes your way and try to make the most out of it. That's what you are supposed to do....". So there are these two voices in my head, much like the friend and the fiend in Launcelot Gobbo's comic Scene in The Merchant Of Venice and I can't make out whom to follow. Sometimes I think that whatever I do (for a living that is), if I consider it the means to achieve the ends (which are things that I love to do, some of which would require me to be financially independent) then all's well. On the other hand the second voice tells me it's the journey that counts and not the destination so if the means itself are not worth the pains the ends never will be.

Why am I not good at anything. I see people all around me, my friends mostly, who are very good at something and it ranges from various aspects of computer science to physics (mainly optics), from running a factory, working 6.75 days a week to being doctors. I hope I soon find my calling in life and when I do I hope to have the courage to follow it. For a third voice in me says that there are no ends and means, there's only one thing and that is Life.