“Concentrate and learn, I will
come and ask each question once again in half an hour”, haven’t we all heard
these lines coming from our parents many times in our school days. We have
always been shown a path which has been followed by many others before us and
has shown them success in their respective fields. What if we do not want to
follow the same well build path, what if we want to create one for ourselves,
what if we do not measure success on the parameters decided by others, what if
our perspective to look and asses success is different. There are many “what
ifs”, and too little answers. The lack of answers is because of the lack of
options that our parents had then to offer us, lack of the risk taking appetite
that we had then as a result of the limited resources.
As we move ahead in our lives, many
things which appeared too complex in childhood start looking simpler, many
things which were too simple then, start becoming complex. We have too often
been told by our parents, relatives, teachers to have a focussed mind and concentrate
on the task that is at hand and considered most important at that point in
time. No doubt on the importance of having a focused approach, but I am sure
there would be so many like me who think of 200 other things when they are
doing one particular task.
I started my working life by
being a feature writer for a website; I totally loved the work with respect to
its basic nature. However, writing for somebody else doesn’t give you a total
freedom and need to abide to the rules of the style of writing, content that
should go in and the manner that entire write up needs to be framed. So, even the
job whose work I loved to the core brought some limitations with itself. I then
moved on to work in an apex banking institution, an insurance company and a non-profit
firm, each of them offered a totally different kind of experience with respect
to the work culture and the very basic nature of the work. They also brought
along certain not so favourable aspects along which led to my wandering mind to
become active and explore something else. Now, that I work in a social sector
consulting firm, there are still many aspects which remain unanswered and
uncovered. I have come to a conclusion that job is and will remain to be a
love-hate relationship, you can stay on with an organisation if you love the
work, and no matter how much you hate the place, culture… in the end it’s the
work that gets you there.
I sometimes feel too many
experiences limit our mind to wander and think beyond. The power of a wandering
mind is often ignored and undermined. These are the thoughts which free us from
our pre conceived notions and help us go ahead of the self or society made
boundaries. They are the ones which teach us to imagine, discover or create. It
helps us to create our own rights and wrongs, make our own mistakes and write
our own stories. Many major inventions that we enjoy today are a result of a
wandering, questioning minds which always had a habit of attaching a “why” to
anything that is brought forward.
In the back of our minds, most of
us know what is that one thing which will bring us closer to ourselves. One,
which truly defines our self and gives us the most happiness and satisfaction.
In the course of our lives, we need to move closer to self by finding out the
medium to do that. Somebody could come closer to self by indulging in Dance,
for some it might be travel, for others it might be getting promotions at work
and a good salary raise. Each one has his own means of happiness; we can be
truly happy if we stop finding our happiness by the mediums made by others,
rather discover and follow our own medium to reach the same.
Let’s keep our wandering mind
awake to help us search our medium to happiness, which is the sole reason for our
survival.
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