Thursday, September 11, 2014

Reflections

The 26th year of my life on earth began on rather morose note. Being alone in a new city, without any real friends to speak of, no means to go places is a sure formula to get one into mild depression. (Is it just me, or that people having most of the basic stuff in life sorted getting depressed is sort of ironic.) At such junctures in life, I'm glad to have been born in a culture which gives high regard to the family structure and it's accompanying support system. They were able to talk me out of despair, sort out my problems one at a time. New home, new car, and a family vacation put the zest back in my life.

By December of 2013, I'd began to look to fill other gaps in my life. Like the ability to make friends. Especially girls. I don't recall how exactly, but I managed to land up on a dating website, and started talking to people.

I was very, very selective at first, which led to the superlative quality of discussions. The people I dated initially were mostly extremely smart, driven individuals, willing to look for people of the same type in the short term horizon. Being with them made me understand, how not ready I was to settle down.

There is one maxim which my mom had taught me which kinda  rang true even before I could seriously consider any "settling down". "No money, no honey" indicating if I couldn't afford to support another person financially, I shouldn't even think about taking up such responsibility.

However, I feel that the maxim doesn't fully capture the intricacy of the prerequisites needed to consider settling down. The amount of parameters that need to align in order to even consider spending your life with someone seems to make my fretting over selecting a car laughable.

Some people believe that such things happen when the time is right; I don't completely buy that. Yes, there is some aspect of luck involved, but most of my friends I see happily married around me also made some efforts which finally resulted into them getting together for life. I believe as time progresses, the efforts needed to find that right person naturally intensify not only because one feels the need for emotional attachment to someone special, but also because the pool of such people only shrinks with time.

People seem to look down upon fervent efforts for emotional happiness, but applaud hard work which goes towards improving one's career. This seems odd to me. Personal happiness comes from different things, some derive it from work, some from their social life, their family, parents, wife, siblings & children. I don't understand why it's wrong if a person of the latter kind makes fervent endeavors to better his/her social life over his/her professional life.

The 26th year of my life on earth has come to a close today, and after filling a gap in my life I feel that I have mostly experienced what every normal 26yo at my age has. (Apart from the drinking, smoking and other crazier aspects). I have the knowledge I need, the experience, to make decisions. How to make such decisions is going to be interesting, I know I've not reached my professional potential, so prioritizing that and searching for emotional happiness along with progressing my hobbies is going to need some awesome time management. Well, guess that's what I need to learn quickly, managing my time. Because I know, people can do such things in parallel, and if someone else can do it, why not me? :)