Single, Successful and happy (?) at 40+. A DIY Approach

Long ago, you were 20-something and newly successful. By the time you were 23, you had bagged the Young Achiever’s Award. On the award night, the luminaries and the limelight were overwhelming and with alcohol stoking the bushfire in your belly, you promised yourself to be unstoppable thenceforth. In order to focus single-mindedly on success, you decided not to be shackled by marriage and domesticity. It was a conscious decision, a trade-off you resolved you will never regret in life.

Then, not so long ago, you turned 30-something. You were already an AVP, but somehow, achievements had lost the punch of the 20’s by then. You had outgrown awards and rewards. Sometimes, you questioned yourself, why was the success-is-happiness formula going awry at times? Why did it give you a sudden pang when you saw a merry couple walking hand-in-hand, or why did your eyes trail a cute kid longingly until the chauffer took the next turn? And you shunned the disquieting thoughts as quickly as they had surfaced.

And today, you are 40+ and a CEO - an undisputed over-achiever. Your work space is brimming with accomplishments, but in direct proportion, your personal space is becoming increasingly empty. Many an evening, you want to come home directly from work, but have nobody at home to ask you to do so. You now consciously realize that being successful is only 50% of the story, and with time, that percentage will drop drastically. What then?

It is then that you acknowledge that a soulmate is the solution. You dine with a few like-minded prospects and go on a short vacation with the best among them. But within 36 hours of living under one roof, minor issues like soft snoring or eating habits attain major proportions. You think about it critically and realize, it’s not about sleeping or eating habits, it’s about accommodating someone else in your personal space, and sadly, you reckon that you don’t have that capacity or willingness anymore. It was there at 25 or 30, but you have been single and successful for too long. Gradually, albeit reluctantly, you let go of the whole idea like a bad loan. Better this way, you tell yourself, than being stuck with a shared life which you can neither stand nor step out of.

And so, over a few months, you accept the inevitable eventuality. You have never regretted the choices you made in life, so you will learn to live as a righteous, guilt-free, happy single. The CEO in you then takes charge and prompts you to be proactive. You approach the challenge with surgical clarity and start piecing together a plan. Mid-way, you suddenly realize with a start that living singly and happily is a DIY thing! It cannot be induced; it will have to come from within. And for that to happen, you will have to script your own DIY rules. Bingo! You start writing your source code for happiness.

Rule one: You won’t bring your designation home. You will clearly demarcate your work and personal spaces and won’t let the boundaries merge. You will just be Supriya or Rajneesh at home, and will start enjoying being just that. If it feels odd at times, you will remind yourself that you were not born as a CEO, and are not going to die as one. It seems easier said than done, so you device a trick. You decide to emulate during your afterhours some of your favorite pass-times that made you happy in your pre-success life - Listening to retro songs on radio, playing chess with a neighbor, learning a recipe from the TV show. The trick seems imminently promising. Emboldened, you extend the rule by resolving not to bring the Six Sigma syndrome home. Zero tolerance is one of your key success attributes, but from experience, you can say that it is counterproductive at home; tolerance is the key attribute of comfortable, homely environments. So you decide to shun the habit of being a 365/7 perfectionist.  

Rule two: You will adopt a child. The first time the idea struck you, it sounded a bit outlandish. But then, it kept coming back at you and grew on you. You thought, probably, the worst part of singlehood is not that you are single, but that you could not be a parent. You always had an underlying but powerful urge to have a child, an extension of you. But at this stage, you either cannot or don’t want to be a biological parent. So what? You will adopt a child. Parenthood, whether biological or otherwise, is a transformational experience, you reckon. However, before approving this rule, you consider the option of keeping a pet, but somehow, it doesn’t measure up to the responsibility and challenge of full-time parenting along with an active career. So, with due respect to pets and pet lovers, you settle for the original idea.

Rule three: You will reconnect with your family. You realize that the business of being successful had distanced you from your family. And once successful, you thought you had traversed to a different world and lifestyle, and could not relate with the ones back home anymore because they had not evolved like you. However, decades later, you miss the family warmth and wholesome togetherness sorely. In hindsight, you think you could have kept both; success and family. No matter how sweet the taste of success, home sweet home is always sweeter. And so you decide to reunite with your family. That’s where you came from, and that’s where you will be going back - a full-circle phenomenon, you muse as you smile a bit wryly. Knowing your family, you are reasonably sure that the doors will still be wide open for you, especially if your parents or at least one of them is still around. Parents have a knack for keeping the family glued and grounded.

Rule four: You will start visiting your hometown periodically. You wake up to the thought one fine morning that visits to family can be effectively followed up with visits to hometown. You had cut yourself off from both for the same reasons, and now you will embrace them for the same purpose. You try to remember when you had visited your hometown last, but can’t, and your urge to go there becomes stronger by the minute - you will visit your school and have tea with your principal who would have retired by now, find out where your childhood crush now lives and perhaps pay a surprise visit too, check out whether the mango sapling you had planted in the temple compound made it to bearing fruit. Your heart warms up as fond childhood memories grip your senses and you instantly tick-mark the idea.

Rule five: You will start working for a selfless cause. All these years, work meant working for self-gain and success meant amassment of name and fame.  However, you have acknowledged that beyond a certain point, they serve a limited purpose in enriching your personal life. Of late, you have been increasingly feeling the need to work for a higher cause, some activity which will fill the void in personal space and reward you in a non-monetary but much more gratifying manner. You readily include the idea as a DIY. You mentally scan your favorite causes, and education tops the list. You could start with teaching math to your maid’s daughter; you muse, and then scale it up to weekend batches. Yey! You smile at yourself flatteringly as you murmur; this is a clincher, the mother of all DIYs!

You give a final, critical look at the DIYs, and they seem so beckoning that you want to start them all at once! But you have limited free time, yet. So you come up with synergistic combinations, which give you rule2-and-rule5, and rule3-and-rule-4 options, while rule 1 remains a constant.

Not bad, you tell yourself as you reflect on the DIY blueprint. It’s late by now, and you drift into easy, sound sleep. You wake up feeling fresh and purposeful, and start the day with this gratifying thought -  If the quality of sleep is anything to go by, my darling DIYs are going to work like magic!

The author is a copywriter/writer by day and works overtime as a dreamer.