Most powerful lessons are experienced

It is a well known fact that by the time you reach your late twenties or early thirties, either you remain heavily opinionated to your beliefs of your parents or change massively as you come across different people and incidents. I belong to the latter group. The lessons I learnt during my own case are that there is no friends forever. Life goes on an on. You move on to jobs, cities and make new friends at every point. The everlasting friendship in movies is rare. It might exist but its rare. Your friends move on. You move on. No need to hold grudges against them. It’s very normal and nothing should be done about it frankly speaking.

Of course money matters a lot. But ultimately it comes down to peace. The fire to work late hours or give it all, has given you money, but not peace. You’ll want to get away for a while and do nothing for some time. The crave and the importance of a simpler life dawns at you like a thunder. You have missed out on family, occasions, even a peaceful birthday of your own. And that salary is no longer giving you the ultimate satisfaction.

And the people in relationships are not characterless. Goodness of a person is not just based on their sex lives. Having male friends is not a crime. Not every girl-boy sitting in a cafe are a couple or friends with benefits. They can be just friends as well. People in live-in are not bad. You, yourself, might not be comfortable in the concept of live-ins or have not experienced pre-marital sex, but you will no longer judge people based on these things.

Moreover, the society looks at them in a disgusting manner and so we tend to think bad about these things in our younger days, but as we age, we tend to look at one simple thing - If those two people are fine, you have no right to judge. There is more to a person than only these things. Their intelligence, their warmth towards you, their helpful nature, their humor.. these things matter more.

Interest in everything matters a lot. You may have taken a field out of its sheer career success rate. But years on years of working, still will not make you fall in love with it. You’ll crave for satisfaction. That heavy pay check will make you smile on that day, and the next day you’ll be back to thinking about your actual interest. You’ll want to work for your passion. Somewhere and something that would not make you feel like a robot. And that’s when you’ll realize, that in this rat race, you no longer know what your interest is. It’s gone and you search online for answers “I don’t want to code anymore, what else can I do?”

Love is absolutely overrated and so is marriage as an institution.Thanks to those TV serials and Bollywood movies. Thanks to novels. Thanks to fiction. You can survive without falling for anyone and you will. By the end of the day, you’ll crave for time for yourself and not for anyone else. Love is not rosy. It is not eternal. People fall in love many times. People fall out of love many times. And people may never fall in love. Love is anything but what is shown in movies or written in novels. If you are committed, your bf/gf will need space. They cannot be there with you all the time. And it is nowhere romantic to have your partner tagging along with you everywhere. It only looks romantic on screen because it is only for 2–3 hours.

Also the looks matter whatever you say. This might sound extremely materialistic but yes looks matter. Anyone who says looks don’t matter at all, are either lying or are too great. The first thing someone notices about you is how you are looking and vice versa. Looks might not be the utmost priority but yes they do matter to some extent. Many will reject you because you are short, you will reject many because they are bald or paunchy or whatever. It’s okay. It happens everywhere. You’ll accept it.

And the kids can be annoying if you are not ready for them as yet.Imagine you going to a theater alone just to enjoy some movie only with yourself and its a nice animated movie, fun filled. And its not dubbed in Hindi for small kids to understand. And you have kids sitting in front, sitting beside you, sitting behind your chair. And they ask questions on every single scene. Why is the mountain singing? Why is this crying? What are they doing? And before you could do anything, the kid behind you is busy firing his legs at the back of your chair like some bullet. Now you go to a restaurant with a friend.

It’s been a while you have met. You want to eat a good dinner with some good conversation. And you open your mouth to speak, and the kid next to your table howls like a Tarzan. To make matters more interesting (pun intended), he runs around, howls in every corner of the restaurant and even around your table. So yes kids are not cute all the time. Friendship is more than timely birthday wish. Once where you would go all angry and judgmental about not being wished on our birthday, now it will not be such a life changing crime. You’ll forget birthdays of your friends and they will forget yours. It’s all part and parcel of our busy lives and we learn to let go. There is more to life and people than being a timely calendar.

Our parents scolding us was not wrong at all you realise later in life. They were right all along for a lot of things and we being immature and arrogant took that in a wrong way. Sometimes scolding is the only way, we asses can be fixed. Those drugs and alcohol are not real fun. I have myself tasted and done that, but honestly, they are not the ultimate fun. You’ll get more enjoyment in simple get together and talking with your friends. Remembering your old school days, your crushes, the silly things you did in front of your teachers. Hell, even sleeping undisturbed will be more fun. In any case, what’s fun in things you can’t even remember the other morning.

Remember, Steve Jobs's last words when he died a billionaire at 56 years old from pancreatic cancer, and here are his last words on a sick bed: ′′I reached the peak of success in the business world. My life is the epitome of success in the opinion of others. But, I have nothing to be happy about except work. In the end, wealth is just a reality of life that I am used to. It was then, lying on a sick bed reminiscing my whole life, I realized all the recognition and the wealth that I was very proud of, became pale and meaningless in the face of the impending death". Learn from life early and remember those lessons forever. Cheers!