Living the Dream

Nothing better than a Sunday to reflect upon few important things of life. It is always good to take a pause on a fresh Sunday to see if you are on the right track and to question yourself – Are you living the dream?

Everyone aspires, everyone dreams. Fortunately, like for many of us, my parents dreamt (on my behalf). And that indeed made life easy for me with no need to put any effort towards ‘defining’ a dream.  Their dream was to see me have a successful career. It made things easier for me – my dream was to help them live their dream of seeing me succeed in my career.

As I decided to make their dream mine, it was logical for me to follow their approach, their principles and values throughout my career. This would ensure no frictions that would otherwise have been caused with approach / values / principles that would be different from theirs. This thought process of not having an independent approach could have backfired, could have gone wrong, but as I look at it today, I feel it was the best thing to have happened. While Mom wanted me to never leave the path of truth and humility, Dad asked me to just not stop working extremely hard, even for a single moment.

It was not one single individual working towards making a career but three individuals, all giving their 100% towards framing one career, mine. We used to have office related discussions at home each day, both, technical and non-technical. We continue to do that, even today. While my Mom comes from a non-technical background, she ensures that she does her bit by reading business news and sharing updates with me when I may not get time to go through the newspapers. They were very clear from the beginning - NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, should hamper my career. And after my marriage, this principle got extended to my wife’s career. And they equally ensured that nothing hampered my and my wife’s careers.

I have never heard them talk of other personal / professional aspirations of their own. On the contrary, at times, when I try to engage into something else to see if it pleases them, they bring me back to the most important aspect of my life, at least for now – ‘Karma’. Any achievement, small or big, has been lived and celebrated by all of us. More importantly, low and difficult moments of my career have been shared together and the learnings therefrom have been phenomenal.

For the past 13 years, they have relentlessly worked, every single day, towards me having a successful career.

They've quietly and by their actions told me a lot about what to dream, how to dream and how to live the dream! I feel blessed to have people within my home who have shared a common goal, a common dream and yes, I Live The Dream!