To strive, to seek, to find

As a kid, I always looked forward to my birthday. The day when you are sure no one gonna scold you and everyone would sport best of their affectionate persona. And in college it was just another day to hangout with friends and make merry as wannabe rebels...Now when another of those days beckons me it suddenly hits me… the meaning of the words… “Growing older”.

The age when you have to make choices.... an awful lot of choices!
To choose the job you want to stick too...To choose the passions you want to pursue…and to find a girl as a life partner! Big decisions that you can’t decide like the movie you had to choose in a twelve-screen multiplex.

I mean these decisions are momentous that at times I deliberately try to divert myself from such thoughts. Probably it is the fear of not making the right choices or moves that perturbs me in this chessboard of life! It is funny how hard I try these days to keep minds off from such matters they keep coming back…as if my heart seems to be cross with the brain and doesn’t seem to allow procrastination of any sorts.

As one gets older you can’t help notice the changes happening around you... Friends many of whom who went where the tide took them...Some got married...Some had kids...Some stayed single for a reason...Some quit jobs…But, most of them seem to have crossed the barricade of decision-making which I find difficult to do.

May be it’s my behavioral trait of being an instinctive person that doesn’t give me the luxury to introspect too hard. I don’t know whether you have heard about it, the simple child’s trick when confused to take decisions by tossing the coin. But the split second before you open the hand you already know which side of the coin you want to see…
Going by that, I know that I want to quit my job and do something afresh…I know I want to find a life partner and all that…So it was not the confusion which holds me back, but the fear …the fear of losing...of making wrong decisions. I know that I need to take that plunge that we later comfort as our own kismet…

I guess, I am like the psychiatrist who knows to advice others but doesn’t know what do with his own life. My thoughts wander to my parents now. They worked hard and gave me a good life…and now they are near retirement...Sometimes it makes me wonder what is the motivation for retirees who one fine day have an extra 10 hours every day in their life...its like a day is suddenly 34 hours long...
Ironic that during career phase we crib about the luxuries of retirement, which looks scary for me now…Objectives change all of a sudden and businesses get personal in nature. To get their children married and after a few years enjoy looking after their grandchildren which would rekindle the memories of their own past. I know deep in my heart when Dad gives that ultimatum for me that I should be married by next year, it his fear of his post retirement hollowness and aging and ofcoz his anxiety to see me settled…Its funny how we basically think alike in many aspects in spite of lot of difference in the nature on the blanket level…

However such thoughts and wavering introspective jaunts help me to freshen up perspectives…At times, I used to wonder whether am a loser...why do I have to think like this in the first place…My mind never wandered like this before…maybe in college with friends around you…parents around you...I did not have a reason to think...Maybe its living in a place so far from friends…where the so called friends are mere acquaintances or talking mannequins with whom I don’t feel like having an frank talk…and I stay online hoping for friends to come online to chat over sometime...But now I think however the circumstances that make me think like this, it has given me a reason to move forward. As a kid I thought I ll learn everything when I get older...But here I end up with questions…questions whose answers I cant ask anyone…but myself!!


Now that I know few of the answers I think now I can give a sigh...it feels like a whiff of fresh air that gives me the much need conviction and strength…god willing…To move forward in life…

As Dr.Crane took inspiration in Frasier from the Tennyson poem, I do the same….

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield