Swimming Upstream

Everyone gets bitten by the self-discovery, self-realization bug once in a while. The last bout that I had left me with a very strong thought, which I don’t really believe is entirely an original of mine because it has been said over and over again since the stone ages.

Meek is the existence of those who float with the flow. The mighty ones challenge the tides.

If you come to think of it, the word “challenge” can be a very relative concept. Different things become challenges for different people. Some love talking, some are painfully shy. Maths comes easily to some, and for some it’s a slow bleeding death. It’s also a national and cultural thing. For instance, in an individualistic society like the US, you are free to practice your own choice and challenges come in the shape of fate and chance. Here in India, whereas, asserting yourself is a challenge in itself. I think it sucks, but that’s the way it is.

The entire society is built on such deep rooted foundations of socially-interdependent systems that it is scary for a person to even think of being entirely on his own. To think of breaking away from the line and setup one’s own shop and sing one’s own song. Imagine a typical Indian life timeline. You are born in a traditional, religious family. You are raised to be an obedient person who is an advocate of his culture and blindly follows all he is told to do by elders. Blindfolded, you go through the motions. School, engineering/medical college, job, marriage, kids, retirement, death.  It’s THE life plan. If even one step goes wrong, people go into panic mode. It’s so automatic that nobody realizes that the life they are living isn’t there’s.  Nobody realizes death was never the last step. They’ve been dead all along. How can this be called life?

Being alive is being in control of your own destiny. Being alive is LIVING your life, not going through the motions that have become a standard because million other did it. Being alive is giving your life the dimensions that you want to, not downsize it to fit someone else’s plan for your life. And I admit, it is lot easier said than done. It’s a daunting task.

You just have to do what you want to. What YOU think is right. 

It’s so amazingly simple that nobody has any idea how to do it. You can begin by stopping whatever you are doing right now, and just think whether what you doing is what YOU want to do. It’ll be the biggest revelation of your life and it will change everything. It will change you. You will clearly see what you want and with time, you’ll figure out how to get it. But the most difficult part comes after that. Standing up for yourself. You will face resistance everywhere. The security and reliance you have become so used to, will vanish. It will be replaced by constant transience and uncertainty, maybe like the cold turkey phase for drug addicts. But ultimately, when you have fought everyone off and found yourself, that addictive aftertaste of smashing a challenge and proving yourself. Believe me; it’s like nothing on this planet. People end up leading wild lives just to taste this feeling over and over again.

That is the taste of life. That is being alive. And being alive isawesome.

(URLs lead to Cinthol's Alive is Awesome campaign. Story courtesy: SS)