Seek What Is Seeking You
As I take a deep breath in, I am transported back to the day when I had a long exchange with one of my ‘smart’ friends from an engineering college of national prestige. From big bucks to a strong footing among his friends, he has practically everything. You’d think that this person has it all sorted. But I guess no. Because who even does in this day and age? We human beings have insatiable desires and fast consumerism isn’t helping. But the issue here is graver than that.
Let me travel back to my tenth grade. For a typical Indian adolescent, this year is the determinant of their fate. A bit unconventional in my ways, I decided to take the road less taken when the forced dream of studying Science had long passed and I had renounced the concept of proving one’s worth in a culture that valued a resume more than an individual’s genuine curiosity. Flummoxed by the move, people had a hard time shooing away the sheer wonderment as to how this seemingly smart girl did not go for Science. But the day I had the discourse with my ingenious friend, my respect for the decision got amplified.
My friend here, stating that technology wasn’t what he was cut out for, made endless lists of his passions but ultimately renounced the practice of seeking what was seeking him and claimed that he just couldn’t put a finger on it. But is that what it is really about? Assuming that he just doesn’t know what to do in life would be nothing more than a conjecture.
Gospel truth lies in the simple logic that he doesn’t want to come clean to his own soul about his implanted fear of breaking the norm of going for things that so-called high-achievers do and he fears crossing the threshold of uncertainty. What he doesn’t realize is that he is doing exactly what petrifies him, ending up in the arms of mediocrity by emulating individuals he has nothing in common with. In a way, he is repeating his own history.
Such is the fate of not one, two, but millions of millennials. Going from a follower to a leader requires immense grit and self-awareness on one’s part. Just experiencing epiphany concerning what you are cut out for is half the battle. Rest of it lies in mustering up courage to actually pursue it so that remorse for not chasing what sets your soul on fire does not ensue in your last days.
We all have been bestowed upon with a specific knowledge, with a knack that’s completely ours and which no one can rob us of. The wealth of nations can be purloined but what you know, how you know it and how you execute it to become the best at it in the world is yours and yours only.
Why? Because specific knowledge is a surreal blend of genetically-gifted traits and environmentally-acquired skills and we are always in the process of honing them since the day we let out our first cry. A literary mind contemplates words well while a mathematical mind is adept with numbers. There’s little interchanging them and if done so, it can result in lack of fulfilment and excellence on their part. Mind you, this process of honing and self-learning won’t end until your consciousness spots it and the famished child inside you is done waiting to be fed with one thing you know how to serve better than others.
Many like my friend undergo the agony of inhaling every second of the day purposelessly since rat race is all they have been taught and a rat race is all they will be partaking in until they realize that purpose lies in serving others with what they have been given more than others. Imitating others is injustice done to that purpose. You can’t become perfect but you can become irreplaceable. And having your specific knowledge at your disposal is the closest you can get to becoming just that.
So create, do not emulate. Create something that has never been created to give the society what it has never been given. Emulation is reminiscent of leaving one perfectly fertile soil to tend to the one that is already being attended to by the best. Tend to your own so that the harvest is unmatched by anywhere else you would have otherwise sowed!
