Pointers to an earlier me

When the presidential elections were underway in the United States, one of the magazines I took to reading regularly started a feature that was meant to be a record of the writer's experience of being caught within a seemingly improbable election cycle. With an unlikely candidate as a nominee of a major political party, the writer felt he owed to posterity a detailed, day-by-day account of the absurdities that were unfolding. This time-capsule was an interesting read. My current write-up can be considered such a time-capsule that I am writing to my past and future selves. In particular, I am addressing it to my past self. This younger self would have considered my present situation (undertaking a job-hunt) unimaginable as she had been raised on expectations of unchanging, unthreatened life-long employment following the acquisition of higher degrees. "Invest your teenage and early twenties in getting a good education (whatever that was), and you will earn stable, rewarding employment for life" was a belief I was subsumed by growing up. To my parents, and other adults around, this belief was as unshakeable as that of theists on the tenets of their religion. I had grown up seeing older siblings and cousins "settle" to a comfortable career that provided them with financial comfort and security, engaging working conditions, and the respect of their peers and family. Therefore, regardless of my choice of career, it was this life that I had unwittingly grown up aspiring towards. My present self, of course, is living out an existence that I consider engaging and enlightening, but also one that is far, far removed from that imagined by me in the past. So, what do I want to tell this younger me who was so woefully misinformed about her own future?

Firstly, I'd tell her to let go of all imagined futures, and focus on the present moment. There is nothing quite like this moment, and it will be gone before you know it.

Next, I would tell her to diligently incorporate the habits of gratitude and humility. Both these are habits that will not likely make any discernible difference on my resume or interviews for positions, etc, but the difference these habits can make within me is staggering. I fail to find the words to describe just how sheltering these feelings are when well established within one's internal landscape. They are akin to the cool shade offered by the thick canopy of a large, welcoming tree in the midst of sweltering heat. With these habits ingrained enough for them to be automatic, it becomes easier to see my successes and lack-thereofs within a larger context, and attribute their presence not merely to my own efforts. I had often been told by motivational articles I've read in the distant past that one needed to own one's successes to be seen as confident and worthy of resources. But, my ancient paternal aunt often said something quite different. To her, life's opportunities, failures and successes were all experiences we were embedded within to make us learn the right lessons. Her view on life's successes was similar to the one echoed in the expression, "Tonight we feast on the labour of centuries" (cited by Hank Green in one of his YouTube videos). Failure, on the other hand, she defined as something different from one's expectations, and a challenge for a person to build something constructive out of the experience. I would, when younger, scoff at this view. I was fascinated by the individual view of success I had come across in a lot of motivational literature in my early years, and it felt very inspiring...until the time when things started to get bigger and more complicated. At that point, this rather simplistic view of one's efforts and their outcomes seemed not just jarring, but cruel as well. It felt cruel towards those who had put in a sincere effort but were faced with fruits not apparently commensurate with their efforts. It also felt cruel as it encouraged a "I am a winner, they are the losers" mentality among those who did manage to get to their chosen goals. Having said that, I do concede that in the complex picture around us, there are, indeed, individuals who are averse to doing a sincere job, and instead, seek to use their wiles or guile to get rewards and opportunities better suited for a more sincere worker. But, as my beloved aunt would say, "Do not be that person who evades responsibility, but don't be the one who does things but is awfully cocky and narcissistic either!"

In addition, I would tell the younger me to stop building elaborate life experiences about my possible futures in my mind, and more importantly, growing attached to those mental images. Because our mind is masterful in conjuring up images that seem far more fun than the life they represent. Moreover, you will never know exactly how fun a life is unless you step into that life and live it, day-by-day, month-by-month.

I recall being fascinated, as a child, of my older cousin's life. She was then a medical student who had made it to med school at the tender age of 16. Her academic successes were the stuff of legend in our family's folklore. She is currently empoyed as a physician who routinely works long hours, runs a research lab, and is juggling a family of three as well. I was initially drawn to her life due to the awe it inspired within me. I had never encountered a mention of her in my extended family which wasn't laudatory or accompanied by a sense of reverence and awe for her achievements in the speaker's mind. In fact, in our minds, she had become her achievement (i.e. getting into a prestigious medical school at 16!). Since her selection to medical school, nary a mention of her academic success went by when her imagined millions in recompense as a licensed physician were not spoken of in a reverential tone. "She will make millions in a single year, and take care of her family and parents like a good daughter should", pronounced one fawning relative hoping to curry favour with our family's newest star.

But our enchantment at my cousin's med school selection can be forgiven if one remembers that more than a handful of us are unwittingly, even unwillingly, awestruck when a stranger walks up to us to inform us that he is a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, or a leading physician or some such. The outer trappings and social currency of these vocations/jobs are staggering even to the most non-materialistic among us, and many a youngster has built an imagined future around such careers/jobs without really understanding the lifestyle and choices associated with them.

I too had, until recently, little knowledge of what my stellar cousin's day-to-day life had been like all these years since being admitted into medical school. But a chance extended visit at her place gave me a rare, much-needed close view into her day-to-day life. It turns out that things are less rosy than was imagined by her numerous admirers! Sure, she is rich, enjoys a lot of privileges that wealth and an elevated social status bring, but she has also lost much along the way whose absence is felt acutely by her and those around her. For example, when she was younger, one of the things we bonded on was our mutual love of recreational reading, and how our reading ambitions always outpaced our skill and discipline at this hobby. In fact, one of the reasons my own mother encouraged this hobby in me was the fact that this much celebrated cousin was known to share it. "Even her free time is spent so constructively", my mom would often say to me. Mom even wondered if the recreational reading might have been the reason she thrived academically and got accepted into medical school. The academic reading must have been easier for her than others because she was always reading books anyways, my mother reasoned!

It turns out that this was certainly not the case. Reading a gripping novel and a school textbook are entirely different. Moreover, reading recreationally is much different and more fun to us recreational readers that reading for work or school. My cousin did not find reading textbooks easier because of her cherished hobby. In fact, she had to slowly wean herself off this hobby while in medical school as her eyes and mind would often be too tired to read anything other than her enormous textbooks. "It was as if I had to put reading, chatting, lolling about on hold for the next 15 years till I was a licensed physician. Now that I do have some time for such past times, I no longer have the patience to reestablish them back into my life. It is as if they are irretrievably lost, and with them, a part of me!", she said to me recently.

To an outsider, this slight change may not be a huge one. But to me, and my relationship with my cousin, this was a relationship-altering change. We can now no longer stay bonded over what was once a mutual pasttime. As a result, months go by before either messages the other. As our mutual silences grow, so does the chasm between us, and in my most recent visit, I noticed a certain exaggerated formality creeping into our interactions. I can only imagine what more time apart from her former pasttime will do to my bonding with my cousin. I realize that this is one of the small, almost unnoticed sacrifices one makes along the way for a better life, and I am sure my cousin is happy in her choices and well aware of what she lost as well as gained through them.

But while reading has become a former past time for my cousin, it has and continues to remain the elixir in my life. A desire to keep reading recreationally has grown deeper within my being, and is no longer a mere pasttime. It is my way of finding solace when bereaved, or forgetting about the awkwardness of a forced social encounter, or a way to make sense of inexplicable experiences and expectations. Reading out a few pages of a book is often a way I bridge gaps in my conversation with my parent or siblings, ensuring that our conversations end on a relaxed note, and are therefore, more likely to be picked up the next day. None of these reasons are, of course, terribly appealing to an outsider, but to me, it has become a way to navigate the world outside and inside of me, and make sense of it. I would be utterly lost if this crutch was taken from me at this or another point in my life. So, to be in my cousin's shoes and to live her life would have meant making sacrificing this past time (for lack of a better term) and being at peace with it. It would also mean becoming a different person than the one I am today, and I am unsure how that alternative me would have fit into the context of my current life and its relationships.

After all, gaps in my employment history have given me some welcome moments with my extended family and friends which would have otherwise eluded me. And those moments have helped keep me happily attached to those people instead of becoming slowly distanced from them as I could have been otherwise.

So, to my past self, I say the following: Be careful what you wish for, and do not wish for anything that you have not experienced first-hand for yourself. And try not to wish for a certain type of life based on the outer "coverings" of someone's life. For example, do not wish to be a Bill Gates just by knowing the size of his bank balance. Being Bill Gates day in and day out is an experience that one has to live for oneself before wishing for it. Maybe he too wishes he hadn't given up something apparently without meaning but still meaningful to him in order to become The Bill Gates!