"Who am I?"
A question like this is more often than not considered representative of someone with a psychological crisis.
Or is it?
I love being a part of this generation of young people. We represent the kids of the 90's and early 2000s. A lot of us have seen both the pre-technology age and the post technology age. No landlines to fitness tracking wristbands. Snail mail to Whatsapp... so on and so forth. Throughout the years, we have been forced to adapt ourselves to the changing landscapes around us. (Not that older generations have not had to do the same) Constant change has brought about differing sensibilities in a lot of us as time goes by. Some of us refused to move out of the paper era into the computer age. Some others kept the bowl cut (also called mushroom cut) going through the 2010s. I had a Nokia 2610 brick phone till atleast 2012.. feel free to judge this fool on that alone.
Almost three decades of steady change has left a lot of us at a completely different point than where we intended to be when we set out into adulthood. What is important now to me was hardly known to me just a handful of years back. What was important to me when I was 21 has completely disappeared from the horizon since then. In a way this makes perfect sense but when you realize how much time you wasted thinking of things that will never be important to you, it sort of feels deflating. I still believe there are geniuses who planned every step in advance, reached their goals and went way past it by this time in their lives.. I'm certainly not one of them. Neither will most of my readers here be.
Ideals and beliefs make a person live life the way they do. Ten years ago if you asked me what unconditional love is, the answer would be a complete 180 from the answer you get today. Ten years from now, who knows how different the same answer would be from now! Life is a constant search for truth. It's a wild goose chase behind the holy grail of self discovery...an ECG connecting moments, people and their feelings.
Self discovery does not happen until you open your heart, lay it out in front of you.. and ask yourself what matters to you and what does not. Many years ago when I had not seen the real world and was still in the loving embrace of my parents, my span of acceptability was a lot smaller than what it is today. The realization: Acceptability is a direct result of what is presented to a youngster. I believed what was told to me, and what was dictated by society. I was stubbornly resistant to change and anything "out of the norm". In short, a CLOSE MINDED WIMP.
Indian society and its norms are a fun story unto themselves. Drinking? No. Smoking? No. Weed? Drug Addict! Late night outings? No. Girlfriends/Boyfriends? No. Pre-marital Sex? Disowned. Homosexuality? Big Fat NO. Women wearing whatever they feel like? NO. Not going to the temple? Blasphemous. Smiling at a random person from the opposite sex? Nope.... It almost feels like a Meghan Trainor song. I know many of us have been through these situations and more. What I have learnt is this - nothing matters but your belief. NOTHING. Not 98% in your high school exams, not your fancy engineering degree, not your 16 years of school, not your first half-girlfriend, not your endless coffers of money. None of the societal norms matter if you believe strongly in yourself. When you believe, you live. Every moment of life then becomes unique, self driven and precious. Every moment fuels your search for the ultimate truth. You then quit existing and start living. (Atleast that's what I think awaits me when I'm done with figuring out where I stand on the roughly 3 million South Indian societal norms.)
Believe, and you Become, Love and you Live!
A question like this is more often than not considered representative of someone with a psychological crisis.
Or is it?
I love being a part of this generation of young people. We represent the kids of the 90's and early 2000s. A lot of us have seen both the pre-technology age and the post technology age. No landlines to fitness tracking wristbands. Snail mail to Whatsapp... so on and so forth. Throughout the years, we have been forced to adapt ourselves to the changing landscapes around us. (Not that older generations have not had to do the same) Constant change has brought about differing sensibilities in a lot of us as time goes by. Some of us refused to move out of the paper era into the computer age. Some others kept the bowl cut (also called mushroom cut) going through the 2010s. I had a Nokia 2610 brick phone till atleast 2012.. feel free to judge this fool on that alone.
Almost three decades of steady change has left a lot of us at a completely different point than where we intended to be when we set out into adulthood. What is important now to me was hardly known to me just a handful of years back. What was important to me when I was 21 has completely disappeared from the horizon since then. In a way this makes perfect sense but when you realize how much time you wasted thinking of things that will never be important to you, it sort of feels deflating. I still believe there are geniuses who planned every step in advance, reached their goals and went way past it by this time in their lives.. I'm certainly not one of them. Neither will most of my readers here be.
Ideals and beliefs make a person live life the way they do. Ten years ago if you asked me what unconditional love is, the answer would be a complete 180 from the answer you get today. Ten years from now, who knows how different the same answer would be from now! Life is a constant search for truth. It's a wild goose chase behind the holy grail of self discovery...an ECG connecting moments, people and their feelings.
Self discovery does not happen until you open your heart, lay it out in front of you.. and ask yourself what matters to you and what does not. Many years ago when I had not seen the real world and was still in the loving embrace of my parents, my span of acceptability was a lot smaller than what it is today. The realization: Acceptability is a direct result of what is presented to a youngster. I believed what was told to me, and what was dictated by society. I was stubbornly resistant to change and anything "out of the norm". In short, a CLOSE MINDED WIMP.
Indian society and its norms are a fun story unto themselves. Drinking? No. Smoking? No. Weed? Drug Addict! Late night outings? No. Girlfriends/Boyfriends? No. Pre-marital Sex? Disowned. Homosexuality? Big Fat NO. Women wearing whatever they feel like? NO. Not going to the temple? Blasphemous. Smiling at a random person from the opposite sex? Nope.... It almost feels like a Meghan Trainor song. I know many of us have been through these situations and more. What I have learnt is this - nothing matters but your belief. NOTHING. Not 98% in your high school exams, not your fancy engineering degree, not your 16 years of school, not your first half-girlfriend, not your endless coffers of money. None of the societal norms matter if you believe strongly in yourself. When you believe, you live. Every moment of life then becomes unique, self driven and precious. Every moment fuels your search for the ultimate truth. You then quit existing and start living. (Atleast that's what I think awaits me when I'm done with figuring out where I stand on the roughly 3 million South Indian societal norms.)
Believe, and you Become, Love and you Live!
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