I feel every word is true...
Courtesy:Quora
Thanks to Manas J Saloi
I have lately realized that most of my answers are somehow related to life advice or philosophy. Being just a 23 years old college grad it is the most pretentious thing one could do I guess i.e Give advice to strangers on the internet. But when someone spends 1K+ credits to A2A you, you have to at least try.
This is not going to be pretty. So read at your own peril.
Why people lead normal lives?
Leading a normal life is super easy. You get born. Your parents decide which school you are supposed to go. You get good marks. You get into a good college. You get a job offer. You get paid in time. You have pretty much everything you need. One day you marry someone your parents deem worthy.
Produce a few kids. Travel once a year. Retire. Live out the the rest of your time till you die one day.
If you did the aforementioned things society will clap for you. Every mother will tell her children to follow your example. You will get respect from your relatives. Why not right? You lived the dream of every uncle and aunt in your family.
Here is what Indian society claims to be the ideal life :
Stand first in school.
Prepare for Olympiads.
Get good marks in 10th boards.
Get into a good high school.
Slog your ass off in coaching centers.
Get into an IIT or equivalent brand name college.
Get into an IIM or score a job with some blue chip company.
Buy a car.
Get married by 27.
Buy a new house.
Work hard at your job.
Go abroad once a while.
Reproduce.
Tell your kids how important marks are for happiness.
Insert into their head that without an IIT life is a waste.
Get retired.
Pay off all your loans by now.
If you miss a single step out of these society starts to panic.
" Sachin's son could not even get into a good college. Who will marry him now?"
" He is working in a start up!! He must not have got a good job. Wasting his life. So sad."
"Why is Mohan's son not getting married ? Is he gay?"
" Why they don't have kids even after two years of marriage. Is he impotent?"
An outlier scares and fascinate people in equal measures. People like to be happy in their own understanding of the world. They think they have a good grasp of what makes one happy. You deviation scares them. Their mocking you restores the balance of their universe.
You are in your Engineering college. You realize pretty early that you are not made for it. You will continue to complete your college degree. You don't want to waste the 2 years you slogged your ass off to get into a good college. You say it is Ok. Most of your friends are also doing the same thing.
You are in a crappy relationship. You know it is going nowhere. You hate the guts of the other person. But you think about all the hard work you have put in making it work. You worry if the next person will turn out to be a even bigger
arsehole. You continue. Then from a 5 year relationship it slowly turns into a 10 year one. You are old now. Why bother to look for someone else. You suffer each other in silence.
You work in a big company. You have a great idea about a new product which
may revolutionize a particular sector. But you are up for a raise. The appraisal cycle is coming up soon. Why waste all the years of experience right? You think "Let's take the pay raise now and sleep on the idea for some time." 20 years later you are no more interested and ready to retire.
" I’ve chosen to spend money on a lot of other things, so now I don’t have money to travel. I mean I just bought the new LED even though I can pretty much stream the same thing on my 10 Mbps Internet. I spend 1000 bucks even weekend on booze. I buy shit I will use only once but I won't save a little every month. The new iPhone5S is out. Let me throw out my old android phone. It will be cool to use watsapp on the new one. ”
It took me just 3K INR for my Bhutan trip. https://www.quora.com/Man
Most people prefer the comfort of their house. I mean they are paying so much mortgage right? Paying their electricity and Cable bills. Why stay in hotels paying more or camp somewhere when you have the safety of your own house.
Delayed gratification still makes people happy somehow.
"Don't worry" it says.
"Working 14 hours a day manipulating excel data is fun too."
"Why go out more when you can eat at home?"
"Why talk to the stranger when there is a chance he/she might not show any interest?"
" Why think so much when life is so much comfortable. Let's us lie down in bed and watch some more random cat photos on instagram."
"I think the TFI program is great dude. But think how behind we will be if we waste two years of our life working somewhere different from our stream."
" I will have to kill myself if my friend who I have been competing since my school days get a better job than me"
-------------------------
I won't address each of these concerns. I sincerely believe that unless one decides to make some changes in his life every advice is pointless. I will
tell you a few stories though.
Michael had been married for a few years. He had a good house, decent job , good friends and a loving Mom. But he knew there was something missing. Slowly and slowly he was becoming fed up with his life. The day job which did not excite him enough, the same schedule without any change, the same things he was repeating. He was a pretty adventurous kind of guy when he was a teen and was really uncomfortable with the prospect of living out his life the way he was living at that time. These thoughts were creating havoc in his marriage as well as his job. On an impulse he decided to back pack across South East Asia. It has been 10+ years and he is still on the road. Currently he is teaching English in a Thai school but will be moving to China soon for his next assignment. He has climbed mountains in Nepal, zip lined in Thailand, taken bath in the Ganges and countless other things which he does not mind sharing about. He drifted apart from his wife but still keeps in touch with his mom. He has no regrets and plan to keep doing the same till he finally feels that he has seen everything, done everything he had ever wanted in life.
Steven and George are college students who dropped out for a year to travel around the world. They had to work 80+ hours week in a factory in Cambridge for some time but managed to save enough to last for 7 months of travel. They did North America first followed by parts of Europe. They learned Mandarin in China and martial arts for 2 months. They rode across Vietnam in their bikes and went tubing in Laos. They will be going back to their college soon to continue with their studies.
Raul is a mechanic born in Spain but who has now settled in London. He comes to Thailand every year to spend a month. If he gets time he visits the nearby countries too. Like countless others before him he has fallen in love with Asia and plans to keep coming back again and again.
Gregory and Marla have been travelling since the last 2-3 months in India. Before that they were in Brazil. Before that Marla was in Africa. They don't own a TV. They have only now decided to get a place of their own. Marla runs a Yoga studio and Gregory owns an olive oil export business.
Aj works in a big multinational company in India. He plans to quit his job next year to travel the whole Indian coast line. He works during weekends so that he can club his leaves and travel a few times every year. He plans to backpack across Europe too soon.
The above comprises of some of the people I have met during my travels. Each one has his/her own unique story. This is to inspire you. You don't need a lot of money to travel. You just need to get out of your comfort zone.
You don't go from staying at home all day watching TV to suddenly backpacking across Europe. Take Baby steps. See parts of your city first. Then your state. Then slowly think of bigger goals.
Oliver Emberton's answer to Career Advice: At age 25, would you pursue a good paying corporate job that makes you unhappy or a hobby that makes you happy but has no guarantee to pay the bills?
Oliver explains it beautifully in the above answer.
About me :
I have no idea what counts as living a successful life.
I have never asked anyone's opinion too. Nor I am anyone to tell you.
I have never been really happy. Thinking about your own mortality since you were a kid does this to you. So I am no one to give you advice on happiness.
I get bored all the time. Mundane things make me depressed.
I have this deep fear that I might die soon. I don't know the reason. But it makes me feel even more alive. I do things I like. I like being with people who excite me.
I love weird. I love uncertain.
I dropped a year in spite of getting a decent AIEEE rank because I could never live the rest of my life thinking " What if ".
I almost lost my first job because I was backpacking across Thailand and did not come back when my company pre poned the joining date.
I jumped at the chance to join a startup just barely a month into my first job.
I plan to eat at a new place every week.
I make it a point to start a conversation with anyone interesting I find in my day to day life.
I make random trips nearby whenever I get time.
I work out now. I procrastinated a lot before joining the gym. The little voice told me " Why pay money to get tired and feel pain". But I finally managed to shut it up for good.
I somehow manage to find time for writing answers on Quora even though I have become quite busy since the last one- two weeks. I left blogging after college. It makes me feel good again to have a platform to put forth my views.
I have a travel account.
I travelled abroad for a month in the summer. It was not a necessity. But I had grown to fear that if I did not do it in the summer I would probably never will.
I used to waste a lot of money on booze and unnecessary expenses. I have cut down on that.
I write a travel blog. Not because I mean to inspire others. But because whenever I have nothing new to write, it probably means I need to travel.
I sometimes get scared out of my wits thinking what if I never lead a nice settled life, get married and grow old with someone special. But I have made peace with the fact that if my nomadic existence means me dying alone in some shelter in Africa it will still mean that I lived an exciting life.
I know my life is nothing special for most people. I want to make it though. For me.
I may turn out to be a spectacular failure. It scares me. But it keeps me alive.
I like telling my goals. It prevents me from backing out of them.
It has been way too long since I cared about what my relatives, neighbours or anyone in particular thought about my life. I live for myself. Period.
I believe one lifetime is still less for everything I want to do. I failed as an entrepreneur in college. I would like another crack at it.
I worked as a Biz Dev guy once. Loved it. I want to do that again.
I want to learn how to ride a bike. I know how to drive a car. But I want to know the former too.
I want to learn how to swim as I plan to take scuba diving lessons in 2-3 years.
Part of my long term goal.
I am not a good coder by any standards. I want to be a better one though.
I want to see all the wonderful places there are in this world. Probably it will mean me not seeing my parents grow old before my eyes. But it is a choice I have made and my parents are ok with that thankfully.
I want to learn more languages. I currently speak Assamese, Hindi, English fluently. Can read and understand Bengali. Speak a bit too. Learnt beginner Spanish. Forgot also. Plan to be proficient in the the last two.
I read a lot of books. I am reading 2 at present on my Aldiko ebook reader.
I am buying the Mahabharata next. I have lately become quite fascinated in our Indian culture and I plan to complete reading the two epics- Ramayana and Mahabharata by the end of this year.
I have no idea where I will be 5 years into the future. What I might be doing. It makes me happy.
I have promised myself to keep myself busy. I keep running from boredom and stability. It means I have to keep moving every 2-3 years. I have lived in 5 different cities in the last 6-7 years.
Buying a house or a car is not on the cards for the near future.
Finally I don't owe my pursuit of happiness to anybody. Just me.
Also remember that when you are about to die, you won't be blaming your parents, society, children or your life partner. You will have to answer only yourself.
Before every major decision I think of two things.
What will my grumpy old future self think of it?
If I get hit by a bus tomorrow and die, will I have led a life where I stayed true to my beliefs?
I still have no idea why I wrote this awfully long answer.
Courtesy:Quora
Thanks to Manas J Saloi
I have lately realized that most of my answers are somehow related to life advice or philosophy. Being just a 23 years old college grad it is the most pretentious thing one could do I guess i.e Give advice to strangers on the internet. But when someone spends 1K+ credits to A2A you, you have to at least try.
This is not going to be pretty. So read at your own peril.
Why people lead normal lives?
- It feels safe and secure.
Leading a normal life is super easy. You get born. Your parents decide which school you are supposed to go. You get good marks. You get into a good college. You get a job offer. You get paid in time. You have pretty much everything you need. One day you marry someone your parents deem worthy.
Produce a few kids. Travel once a year. Retire. Live out the the rest of your time till you die one day.
- It is what society expects.
If you did the aforementioned things society will clap for you. Every mother will tell her children to follow your example. You will get respect from your relatives. Why not right? You lived the dream of every uncle and aunt in your family.
Here is what Indian society claims to be the ideal life :
Stand first in school.
Prepare for Olympiads.
Get good marks in 10th boards.
Get into a good high school.
Slog your ass off in coaching centers.
Get into an IIT or equivalent brand name college.
Get into an IIM or score a job with some blue chip company.
Buy a car.
Get married by 27.
Buy a new house.
Work hard at your job.
Go abroad once a while.
Reproduce.
Tell your kids how important marks are for happiness.
Insert into their head that without an IIT life is a waste.
Get retired.
Pay off all your loans by now.
If you miss a single step out of these society starts to panic.
" Sachin's son could not even get into a good college. Who will marry him now?"
" He is working in a start up!! He must not have got a good job. Wasting his life. So sad."
"Why is Mohan's son not getting married ? Is he gay?"
" Why they don't have kids even after two years of marriage. Is he impotent?"
An outlier scares and fascinate people in equal measures. People like to be happy in their own understanding of the world. They think they have a good grasp of what makes one happy. You deviation scares them. Their mocking you restores the balance of their universe.
- They think " Why waste the earlier effort?"
You are in your Engineering college. You realize pretty early that you are not made for it. You will continue to complete your college degree. You don't want to waste the 2 years you slogged your ass off to get into a good college. You say it is Ok. Most of your friends are also doing the same thing.
You are in a crappy relationship. You know it is going nowhere. You hate the guts of the other person. But you think about all the hard work you have put in making it work. You worry if the next person will turn out to be a even bigger
arsehole. You continue. Then from a 5 year relationship it slowly turns into a 10 year one. You are old now. Why bother to look for someone else. You suffer each other in silence.
You work in a big company. You have a great idea about a new product which
may revolutionize a particular sector. But you are up for a raise. The appraisal cycle is coming up soon. Why waste all the years of experience right? You think "Let's take the pay raise now and sleep on the idea for some time." 20 years later you are no more interested and ready to retire.
- The 'I have no money' problem.
" I’ve chosen to spend money on a lot of other things, so now I don’t have money to travel. I mean I just bought the new LED even though I can pretty much stream the same thing on my 10 Mbps Internet. I spend 1000 bucks even weekend on booze. I buy shit I will use only once but I won't save a little every month. The new iPhone5S is out. Let me throw out my old android phone. It will be cool to use watsapp on the new one. ”
It took me just 3K INR for my Bhutan trip. https://www.quora.com/Man
- They like the comfort of their home. Curled up in their beds watching the latest episode of Big Boss.
Most people prefer the comfort of their house. I mean they are paying so much mortgage right? Paying their electricity and Cable bills. Why stay in hotels paying more or camp somewhere when you have the safety of your own house.
- I will do that once I graduate/ get settled/ retire.
Delayed gratification still makes people happy somehow.
- The biggest reason of all : The little voice inside your head that whispers shit all the time.
"Don't worry" it says.
"Working 14 hours a day manipulating excel data is fun too."
"Why go out more when you can eat at home?"
"Why talk to the stranger when there is a chance he/she might not show any interest?"
" Why think so much when life is so much comfortable. Let's us lie down in bed and watch some more random cat photos on instagram."
- People think their career will stall if they walk on the road less taken for some time.
"I think the TFI program is great dude. But think how behind we will be if we waste two years of our life working somewhere different from our stream."
" I will have to kill myself if my friend who I have been competing since my school days get a better job than me"
-------------------------
I won't address each of these concerns. I sincerely believe that unless one decides to make some changes in his life every advice is pointless. I will
tell you a few stories though.
Michael had been married for a few years. He had a good house, decent job , good friends and a loving Mom. But he knew there was something missing. Slowly and slowly he was becoming fed up with his life. The day job which did not excite him enough, the same schedule without any change, the same things he was repeating. He was a pretty adventurous kind of guy when he was a teen and was really uncomfortable with the prospect of living out his life the way he was living at that time. These thoughts were creating havoc in his marriage as well as his job. On an impulse he decided to back pack across South East Asia. It has been 10+ years and he is still on the road. Currently he is teaching English in a Thai school but will be moving to China soon for his next assignment. He has climbed mountains in Nepal, zip lined in Thailand, taken bath in the Ganges and countless other things which he does not mind sharing about. He drifted apart from his wife but still keeps in touch with his mom. He has no regrets and plan to keep doing the same till he finally feels that he has seen everything, done everything he had ever wanted in life.
Steven and George are college students who dropped out for a year to travel around the world. They had to work 80+ hours week in a factory in Cambridge for some time but managed to save enough to last for 7 months of travel. They did North America first followed by parts of Europe. They learned Mandarin in China and martial arts for 2 months. They rode across Vietnam in their bikes and went tubing in Laos. They will be going back to their college soon to continue with their studies.
Raul is a mechanic born in Spain but who has now settled in London. He comes to Thailand every year to spend a month. If he gets time he visits the nearby countries too. Like countless others before him he has fallen in love with Asia and plans to keep coming back again and again.
Gregory and Marla have been travelling since the last 2-3 months in India. Before that they were in Brazil. Before that Marla was in Africa. They don't own a TV. They have only now decided to get a place of their own. Marla runs a Yoga studio and Gregory owns an olive oil export business.
Aj works in a big multinational company in India. He plans to quit his job next year to travel the whole Indian coast line. He works during weekends so that he can club his leaves and travel a few times every year. He plans to backpack across Europe too soon.
The above comprises of some of the people I have met during my travels. Each one has his/her own unique story. This is to inspire you. You don't need a lot of money to travel. You just need to get out of your comfort zone.
You don't go from staying at home all day watching TV to suddenly backpacking across Europe. Take Baby steps. See parts of your city first. Then your state. Then slowly think of bigger goals.
Oliver Emberton's answer to Career Advice: At age 25, would you pursue a good paying corporate job that makes you unhappy or a hobby that makes you happy but has no guarantee to pay the bills?
Oliver explains it beautifully in the above answer.
About me :
I have no idea what counts as living a successful life.
I have never asked anyone's opinion too. Nor I am anyone to tell you.
I have never been really happy. Thinking about your own mortality since you were a kid does this to you. So I am no one to give you advice on happiness.
I get bored all the time. Mundane things make me depressed.
I have this deep fear that I might die soon. I don't know the reason. But it makes me feel even more alive. I do things I like. I like being with people who excite me.
I love weird. I love uncertain.
I dropped a year in spite of getting a decent AIEEE rank because I could never live the rest of my life thinking " What if ".
I almost lost my first job because I was backpacking across Thailand and did not come back when my company pre poned the joining date.
I jumped at the chance to join a startup just barely a month into my first job.
I plan to eat at a new place every week.
I make it a point to start a conversation with anyone interesting I find in my day to day life.
I make random trips nearby whenever I get time.
I work out now. I procrastinated a lot before joining the gym. The little voice told me " Why pay money to get tired and feel pain". But I finally managed to shut it up for good.
I somehow manage to find time for writing answers on Quora even though I have become quite busy since the last one- two weeks. I left blogging after college. It makes me feel good again to have a platform to put forth my views.
I have a travel account.
I travelled abroad for a month in the summer. It was not a necessity. But I had grown to fear that if I did not do it in the summer I would probably never will.
I used to waste a lot of money on booze and unnecessary expenses. I have cut down on that.
I write a travel blog. Not because I mean to inspire others. But because whenever I have nothing new to write, it probably means I need to travel.
I sometimes get scared out of my wits thinking what if I never lead a nice settled life, get married and grow old with someone special. But I have made peace with the fact that if my nomadic existence means me dying alone in some shelter in Africa it will still mean that I lived an exciting life.
I know my life is nothing special for most people. I want to make it though. For me.
I may turn out to be a spectacular failure. It scares me. But it keeps me alive.
I like telling my goals. It prevents me from backing out of them.
It has been way too long since I cared about what my relatives, neighbours or anyone in particular thought about my life. I live for myself. Period.
I believe one lifetime is still less for everything I want to do. I failed as an entrepreneur in college. I would like another crack at it.
I worked as a Biz Dev guy once. Loved it. I want to do that again.
I want to learn how to ride a bike. I know how to drive a car. But I want to know the former too.
I want to learn how to swim as I plan to take scuba diving lessons in 2-3 years.
Part of my long term goal.
I am not a good coder by any standards. I want to be a better one though.
I want to see all the wonderful places there are in this world. Probably it will mean me not seeing my parents grow old before my eyes. But it is a choice I have made and my parents are ok with that thankfully.
I want to learn more languages. I currently speak Assamese, Hindi, English fluently. Can read and understand Bengali. Speak a bit too. Learnt beginner Spanish. Forgot also. Plan to be proficient in the the last two.
I read a lot of books. I am reading 2 at present on my Aldiko ebook reader.
I am buying the Mahabharata next. I have lately become quite fascinated in our Indian culture and I plan to complete reading the two epics- Ramayana and Mahabharata by the end of this year.
I have no idea where I will be 5 years into the future. What I might be doing. It makes me happy.
I have promised myself to keep myself busy. I keep running from boredom and stability. It means I have to keep moving every 2-3 years. I have lived in 5 different cities in the last 6-7 years.
Buying a house or a car is not on the cards for the near future.
Finally I don't owe my pursuit of happiness to anybody. Just me.
Also remember that when you are about to die, you won't be blaming your parents, society, children or your life partner. You will have to answer only yourself.
Before every major decision I think of two things.
What will my grumpy old future self think of it?
If I get hit by a bus tomorrow and die, will I have led a life where I stayed true to my beliefs?
I still have no idea why I wrote this awfully long answer.
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