Plan B.. The last rebellion

Like most people from my generation of Indians who turned twenty a few years before the turn of the millennium, life used to be a series of point to point journeys for me – rendering me cockily sure of myself , especially in the brave new super-connected world I was stepping into and with all the success literature I grew up on. No destination was off-bounds for me & no dream was audacious enough as I set off accumulating what psychologist Meg Jay calls, my ‘identity capital’. Like others in the first batch of crossover youngsters who spent their first rebellion in the pre-internet era, my quest for meaning was abruptly cut short as I suddenly graduated from my small town roots into an ocean of freedom – to choose, to be ‘myself ’, to explore and conquer the world, because it was ‘Okay to be Me’. Because it was the summer of self-expression, the season of celebration of the self. Somewhere along the way, I left behind my combat with myself , my hunger to be something bigger, from within. As a result I never really found time to find my second rebellion. I let go of any nagging discontent, I stopped saying my NO’s.  I was too busy saying a hearty ‘Yes’ to all possibilities that came my way, constructing life as a photo album that was a collection of temporary disjointed moments archived in the order of social validation in the descending order of ‘Likes’ , in this age of fluid existence where relationships became fleeting and photo shopped like our Instagram feeds, where commitments became transactional and life started loosening itself from its core and increasingly becoming a popularity contest. In the din of 24x7 communication, I started losing out my private moments of solitude. The small inner voice was stifled by the buzz of the smartphone. My greed for acceptance and my fear of missing out turned me into a broadcasting personality, into a self-aggrandizing brand manager consistently promoting myself , begging superficial applause for a carefully painted cooler and more photogenic version of me who was desperate to become famous for being famous among strangers I didn’t care about , and who didn’t care about me either.

At work, I enlisted in my races, found my heroes, and tried to model myself around them as I got increasingly busy being busy without pausing to ask myself if all the busyness was worth anything. Work ceased being a vocation and became a game. If you were not winning at someone else’s expense, it was automatically assumed that you were losing. I stopped making friends for the sake of friendship. I stopped making detractors for the sake of values. In many ways, I became a version of what William Deresiewicz calls, in his book by the same name, an ‘Excellent Sheep’, and joined a generation of ‘polite, striving , praise addicted & utilitarian professionals without a sense of wonder, rebellion, moral adventure or passionate weirdness.’ 

And then, one day the alarm went off. Like it usually does.

Except for the rarest of rare ones, we all hit a wall somewhere in our journeys. It could be a harsh downgrade in our careers, or being passed over for someone else and made to feel that we are not good enough . Sometimes it is a failure of a long relationship, the loss of a loved one. For most of us however, it is not so dramatic. We just gradually sleepwalk into the wall and the collision brings us around. For me, this happened about four years ago – my personal Telos crisis. It started with a book that shook me out of my slumber. At first I blamed it on forty, and made fun of it, thinking it will go away. It didn’t. Instead, I started feeling increasingly disillusioned about my life, unable to account for the decades squandered in trying to become someone I didn’t identify with, or even like . The same corporate hypocrisy I had yearned to master one day, began to disgust me. I started calling ass kissers out in public and making new enemies. I was adrift, confused, agitated. And lonely. But secretly happy. Like a fourteen year old soul trying to express himself in a forty year old body.

Whenever we move from one phase to the next, we go through a period of limbo. Mine lasted three years. During these years, I kept alternating between my earlier self and a new unformed self that I was struggling to define. Maybe I was scared to let go of a cultivated personality in exchange of an untested character.

2019 was finally the year when I decided to shake things up . For starters, I threw my social media life into the dust bin. And with it, the thousands of connections I really did not need. I also de-linked my personal and professional identities. After two decades of being a corporate robot, this can be a bit unnerving. But after I did these, I somehow started breathing more easily. And while I worked all the time I worked, in a great job in a great organization, I also found back my pockets of silence. A year ago , I wrote a post on my blog that I called ‘The forty-twenty conversation’ , imagining what advice I would have given my own 20 year old self, had I met him over a drink at the beginning of a new year.

 A year on, I am happy to write that I get several opportunities to do the reverse now , i.e. to listen to my 20-year old self, and to connect back my dots to where I came from. I have happily discovered that I need more insights from him than he needs from me. Yes, the two of us still sulk and have disagreements at times. But we are making good progress. He is helping me undo my messes and to peel off my mask. He reminds me every day that the endless trapping of a virtual oblivion & the relentless quest for some professional horizon will forever keep me enlisted in a frightening race which I can never win. There will always be unanswered email in my inbox. There always will be someone shrewder than me who will overtake me somewhere. Someone will manage more Facebook likes , someone else will garner more Twitter followers. Each minute I invest in running this mad race, is a minute I take away from real life that is slowly slipping away. The partner is graying (Oops - not literally, but metaphorically so ! :) ) . The kid is growing up and becoming a stranger. The parents are wrapping up their journeys. The real friends are drifting away. There is a real life ticking away out there somewhere . There is deep meaningful work waiting for me out there beyond these back to back, meaningless and 'you-watch-my-back, i-watch -yours' meetings . There are books to read, experiences to savor, legacies to leave and goodbyes to say.

There is this last rebellion that beckons me. The long road, back to myself.

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“Stranger..”

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 I remember the year when,

 I wanted to run the country.

 I was a little mad with man.

 At imbeciles and dorks,

 calling shots in my land.

I remember the year when,

 I wanted to start a religion.

 I was a little mad with God,

 at the thorns in my path,

 and His guffaws at my yelps.

Not anymore, I am quieter now.

 I am less rattled with man,

 and less amazed at God.

 I see, I smile, I move on.

 I have more yesterdays to unlive,

 and less tomorrows to give.

I know of course that I am not I.

 The one who walks with me.

 Sometimes in zest, sometimes in pain.

 I cover him well, and noone can see.

As the same sun wheels back,

 from a dawn to a dusk,

 I try to remember the year

 when we traded places..

 My shadow and I.

Like two corners of a photo frame,

 Never to part, or to meet again……

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 ("Stranger", is an excerpt from a poem from my 2013 blog archives).

Thank you David Brooks. 'The Road to Character' was an important wake up call in many ways for me.