Take this post as advice for your love life or your career. Works either ways.
from Chess-mind
Some people spend their entire lives looking for love, never finding it.
I can’t recall where I first read or heard this line. Perhaps from a movie, a book or judging from the simplicity, an original realization that hit me during a profound moment of clarity. All I can recall is that this mantra, if you will, has dictated a major part of my past decade.
Finding something, someone you love is no doubt tough. And especially if you are young and early twenties, finding these takes up most of your time. At least finding someone to love does take priority over finding something that you love doing.
I won’t lie, I’m a geek and I’ve spent more time finding something to love than someone. Mostly because I presumed finding that girl was easier than figuring out what I loved to do. Or to be honest I expected that girl to just walk into my life, the moment marked by two violins playing in the background, bright flash of sunlight and people around me moving in slow motion. And then somebody, very wise, gave me advice which can be most eloquently summarized in Hindi as, ‘Beer ho ya ladki, mangna padta hai.’ In English, ‘Be it a beer or a girlfriend, you have to ask for both.’ Now that’s life advice. You don’t always have to win over hearts, sometimes just asking for it is enough.
I’ve been very fortunate to have found both only to realize that these can be multiple people and ‘things’. You get rejected or fall out of love either ways you know who you are not meant to be with or what you do not love.
Today when I see friends going about their lives and continually struggling to figure out what jobs they should take up or wondering what they are good at, I am reminded of my old self hoping for that girl to walk in to my life. To find out what you are good at or what you love doing, you have to look. Look under rocks, behind doors, talk to other people. And the job’s not done after you think you’ve found it. That is the equivalent of having a crush on somebody you don’t know very well yet, you are not sure if she’s fun, loyal, etc. You really have to spend time with this girl to figure out if there’s a future worth committing to. And more often than not she’s not the right girl. So there is never going to be a day when you’ll suddenly realize that you are really meant to be an accountant, if you have not already spent hours and hours accounting.
Frequently very early we end up committing more than we ought to and that really does mess things up. That’s like taking a job because you think the great pay will make up for the lousy work, or going to graduate school because you want to postpone deciding what to do with your future. So kiss that boy but don’t utter drunk ‘love you’ until you are sure. It might not seem like it right now but there are boys more right for you out there. You HAVE to look.
Start with reading a lot and talking to interesting and passionate people. Almost all interesting people are already in love and they are the best people to point or nudge you in the direction where your love lies. But most importantly remember to look around and then try. If you are neither failing nor succeeding, then that’s a sign that you are not trying. A friend of mine told me he’s been rejected by over a dozen girls but he had happier endings with 4-5 others. I’ve worked on more than half a dozen start-ups and had moderate success with only one. Yes, you are not the only person who’s been heartbroken. The truth is every time we try, we become better at it and every time we fail, we become smarter.
What I mean by trying is, trying to learn more, spending more time on it and trying to get good at it. Remember the time when you really loved physics or literature? It was only because you were immersed and focused on getting really good at it. Today we are all distracted people blindly groping around.
I’ll stop.
I hope you find a little inspiration in this post and I really hope we all find what we are looking for. It is extremely tempting and easy to not try but you’ll all agree, ‘It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.
Good luck!
Abhishaken 