Would you love to do you what you love?

First things first: I am not giving gyaan, but I want you to receive it, as I said earlier—‘to teach’ is in our genes (I got this Idea from a good friend), I also say, don’t budge to speak if you think you have verified information.

People [1] always have got something to say, you have got to do what you got to do. People laughed at me when I was hopping jobs, people have laughed at me when I was struggling to make a career in Music—“what next? They would always ask me”. I can easily say that I have got past all that and I can say that I love what I do. I love [2] coming to office everyday, I don’t have to say (who the hell is God anyways) TGIF. There are days when I even work from home; I know I would be hated for saying what I said. Most of us want a comfortable 9 to 5 job for few years, a bitchy girlfriend (a playboy if you’re the opposite), then a “seedhi saadhi” wife (an obedient dog for the opposite), then we want few kids to raise, and list just goes on. Lots of people, I have found, wish they had done that (don’t know what), wish they had just attended that painting class or that guitar class, as we all know, time never comes back. But I can’t really control peoples wants, I am instead trying to cut through all that come up with something that we all want to do—“do what we love”.

I still remember my PL had bought tickets for the Deep Purple concert in Bangalore, she knew that I had worked for 2 continuous days before that–I am not saying that every PL will do that if you work hard, but it is easy to forget that you will be positive only if you want to and you do see positives [3]. That some people are after you all the time has passed the tests, and there is nothing much you can do about, you just have to ignore that fact like a mole on your nose–if not for that, you would have entered the miss India contest and won it too, you see? No? (I really like doing this—see? No? As if I am an eye surgeon and I am slowly, one by one, operating on everybody in this world and asking them “see? No?”).

But, agreed, life sometimes doesn’t give you much choice, neither does it leave you with much courage where you can decide to say “Do hell with it” and do whatever you want to do. But solutions exist because problems arise, and we have to choose if we want to wrestle with the problem or whether we want to be consumed by the problem.

Doing what you love doesn’t mean you can sit on the Californian beach and wonder about the next wave that is going to sweep the sand, thinking, someday the waves will carve out your name on the sands. Trust me, it is time tested—you will be bored, as human beings, we have got to do something.

A typical response to what I am saying can be: “You don’t understand, I have spent a fortune for getting a degree and this rate of earning would require my children to repay the loan” –negative return on investment—as one of my friends likes to call it. But I say again, nature, in spite of all the reversals, has a way about it; it seems to balance things with time, question remains: are you ready to play the game? It all just happens in a split second, if you do not last, you lose.

I think we have to be hard on ourselves for once. We have to break the shells and say that “yes, I don’t like this, I am not going to do this” or say “I am going to do something that will help me reach where I want to”. That said– it is not very easy to know what you want to do, or to know what you love, unless you are a child prodigy good at some art or something that can be pursued and made a career out of–if you are reading this, chances are that you aren’t one (that’s plain arrogance). So the only choice you are left with is to try to know yourself somehow, know what gives you that extra “kick” in life, and see if you can sustain that kick consistently–if yes, then you’ve got it. I also feel it is better to separate yourself from a place where you feel you don’t belong to; you neither do well for yourself nor to the place by not parting ways. You won’t believe the kind of results that can come out if you actually understand that and then implement that. Organized rebellion demands people to be a part of the system, at least if you don’t want to end up being a junkie or you don’t want to end up in a punk-rock band; to change the system, you first need to be in the system–you have to know the rules to break them (that applies to the system you create inside your brain, and when you want to change, you know where the change comes from, no?)

So first, you have to know that you need a change, a change that has to understand why it is happening and what it is going to change into. It will happen that the change will reject you lot of times, and you will want to recede into the old self—where you were at least allowed to be lazy, you were not trying to do something else, trying to be a change—your not so self. Instead, you can still get out of the bed, and say to you, “What is the big deal with life anyways? I know I am a failure, happy?” and you will be ready for the next adventure, still calculating your means, still not forgetting that you will need enough rice to eat in the night and three cups of tea (bhai sahaab (meaning gentleman), log jyaada chai peete honge (meaning there are people who drink more than 3 cups)) — But, no more. You will go out, see that your friends have dressed up well, speaking to their GF/BF on the phones, kissing each other goodbyes, getting into their cars (don’t worry, you will have yours too), and all that will suddenly sweep your brain out of all the things that you had taught yourself the night before. “I can easily live like that, can’t I?” you say to yourself. You also feel a bit proud saying that, but it is of no use, it all comes back to you—“Fuck, I am not doing the right thing, fuck you, no, seriously, fuck you”, you say again. Or, you just end up pretending or saying that you like what you do, that is what most of the people around us do, not because they actually mean it, but because that is what expected of us—kind of a social statement. (How many people will really still continue doing what they do for living without getting paid? If you really love what you are doing, you will still do it. Say if you are painter, you will still paint, difference being, that you might have to work in restaurants in day time in order to feed yourself).

Warning:

With some calculations, it is easily said of people like me—that we either do very well in life, or our actions seem to be very bipolar in nature, and lots of us end up doing nothing in life. But, again, I am not really saying that you should go against the nature and do that, nature itself has programmed itself to not let something like that happen to itself, but I say it is just those small “tweaks”, which can decide you making a choice for yourself or you being chosen by some choices.
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Lots of people do come to a conclusion about what they would like/love to do, but there are again, problems that come in the way that stop them from doing what they would like to do. One common approach of getting around that is thinking that you will do something (like programming) for a while (say till you are 40), and then do what you love after that. But it is sad that most of those plans remain as it is, they never really actualize, by the time you are in a position to do something, you are already staring at a less crispy packet of chips, and a bottle of cola that has lost all its fizz—Yes, that is definitely a very, very weak plan, especially the kind of will power we are endowed with, did we have the will?

So the next option is do both the things (the one that you have to do to make a living + something that you would like to become source of living) at the same time. Although it sounds good, this option is not for the faint hearted. As many people have put it—Job and work are two different things, you separate both the things because you see a difference between them, how can you still do justice to both when you already know that one is more fun?

But in either of the cases, you need persistence, yes, sad I know. Problem with lots of us (especially the quarter-lifers) is that we don’t know what will give us happiness, we think we know it, but we don’t—we would have been happy otherwise. Think about it, you usually are able to take decisions, then you are also able to solve the problems with some effort, but again, only to realize that you solved the wrong problem, isn’t it? So you have to get that right. How? Again, see if the “kicks” are lasting enough time. You have to be able to say “Good yaar”, you have done something really good today, I really think I have done some work, you actually have to be able to admire yourself for what you have done, apart from the admiration people who care about you will shower upon you. You have to be obsessed with yourself, no matter what people say, only listen to those whom you really respect, yes your friends. Ask yourself if you are able to respect your friends, I know that sounds very ruthless, you have to make a choice, Rajma and rice or Vada pav (it’s a really bad comparison, No? hehe, laugh people laugh).

There are so many things connected to this issue that we will need a sitting (you know what I am talking about, don’t you?) to talk about it at length.

Anyways, are you disappointed with what you have got so far? If yes, then it is good. Knowing that you are disappointed is the first step towards being ‘not disappointed’ (it’s a pain typing this word again and again). Ignorance is not always bliss; we have to get that clear first. But if you are failing, but still trying in the direction of what you at least hazily know that you want to become, it is fine. History tells us that many great people have experienced severe disappointments in life at the beginning, may be you are just one of them? Don’t ever say you can’t, you always can, really, I don’t want to sound like Stephen Covey or some shit, I am a failure, yes, I accept, would you at least believe it now? Don’t decide to soon, or don’t come to conclusions based on few sample points, time, yes, but that will be another discussion. Remember, constraints are fantastic; they get less credit than they should, and they are actually making our lives simpler by giving us less to think about. Don’t be fooled into thinking that a million bucks will give you what you want in life: the happiness, the ability to choose what you want to do, etc.

First things first: you first have to know that you can do what you love, you see? No?

The world wants you to do what you love—yes!!

Notes

1. Why should you believe me?  And what credentials do I have to distribute gyaan? It happens to me that I am always looking for various kinds of things which can teach me something, and I always stumble on luminaries, some whom I admire, some not so. But all the great ones have one thing in common—they all have been there and they are doing it. So there were lot of times, I used to think “well this guy is head of science department in MIT, he obviously knows shit, and he’s got things to say, I can’t possibly benefit from them”. I think for a change, if you hear it from somebody who himself is coming to terms with life– then it might strike you more than it otherwise would or could.

2. Like HandyManny. I love watching this animation.

3. I raise this issue first, because most of the audience who read this belong to “office” cultures, where, there is always a boss sitting in front of you.

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