Thursday, July 3, 2008

The butterfly effect

I have often wondered, it is only me? Is it only me or all people suffer from the moments of indifference. When I prompted a few of my friends, to my surprise all of them accepted, albeit a few reluctantly. It felt so reassuring to be a part of the herd.

When I think about my life, there have been so many instances, where I was so indifferent between 2 choices but finally pursued one without doing any SWOT analysis.
I was 15, I knew all about cricket and movies and girls but had an iota of an idea about the difference between the career paths of a Science or a Commerce graduate. Ya, everyone knows that commerce leads to you becoming a CA and science makes you an engineer or a doctor. But, how about the lives of a CA or an engineer or a doctor. Who is happier of the lot. Finally, out of pure dilemma, I took up science -medical. Though, I hardly knew how the life of a vet doctor is different from a cardiologist. One month into medical and I shifted to non-medical mainly because of my inability to draw a neat frog's lifecycle to the utter dislike to my biology teacher who teared my 2-hours inept effort in 2 seconds and asked me to redraw it. It prompted me to introspect and I took up non-medical as a silent protest to my biology teacher, hardly realising how different my life would be after 12 years down the line. Then, the conventional option was to opt for engineering, which I did as an obedient child hardly understanding the effect it will have in my life. Life moved on and being a genius that I am, getting a seat in a reputed engineering college was not very difficult.
Then, came another stage of indifference during placements, where I hardly had any idea about the profile of an engineer in a core- company and in an IT services company. Also, there was so much indifference between taking an exam of a GRE or an MBA. I took both but decided to pursue the latter, never having any idea about the course of life post-graduation for either courses.
Then, again with limited knowledge, I started my career in sales and marketing, again being indifferent between a sales and a consulting job during placement. or maybe finance or an IT one. So, I shuffled between them ending up unhappy in each job. Am still to figure out, what interests me.
Finally, the most important event of my uneventful life happened when my parents decided to marry me. Again, I was indifferent between marrying a housewife and a working one. And choose between intelligence and beauty. (My experience friends reassured me, no one gets both). Finally, I zeroed in on a girl, who is my wife, out of 3 indifferent choices I had in my mind.
Today, I realise that there have been so many indifferent situations, where I could have gone either ways. I often wonder, what course my life would have taken, had I taken up commerce or medical in 11th standard, or taken up job in a core-services company or had pursued with GRE or had continued my first job in sales or had married some other girl instead of my current wife. Would I be happier than what I am today or would I be worse off.
Then, I reassure myself by telling that whatever permutation/ combination I would have folllowed in those key moments, I would have been as happy/sad as I am today. After all, happiness is the state of the mind. Today, whenever my friends and relatives ask me what would I like my first child to be: a boy or a girl. I answer proudly "I am indifferent".

2 comments:

Vibhash Prakash Awasthi said...

basic rule of blogging...use of the words indifferent and wife should be separated by at least 5 sentences...else.....wish u luck ;)

Rishav said...

Actually i think the feeling is much more generic than you accept. People from all walks come to a crossroads and decide on a whim...

but thats the beauty of a growing society like india..people get so many opportunities to do what they actually want to do