Job, Marriage, Kids and Retirement

Job, Marriage, Kids and Retirement: Who’s responsible?

About 60% of the Indian engineering students wanted to be something else in their life rather than being an engineer. And it is not in engineering only. The case is same with all professional degrees in India. Whenever you will ask your friend, why he choose this course, a reply like this will be very rare “Because I always wanted to be an XYZ and studying this course is my passion”. Most of the replies are like

“Are papa ne bola”

“Are bhaiya ne bhi same course kiya tha”

“Aur kuch karne ko tha nahi”

“Chacha ke ladke ne bhi ye kiya tha”

So we will try to find out who is responsible for this mismatch between profession and passion?

One of the easiest ways to explain why you didn’t do something in your life is to play the blame game. Now here doing something in life is not only earning money, getting married, having a house or car but it is about choosing a life to live on your terms, which is not influenced by any relative or society. People play this blame game on their parents, time, money, age and many more things. Let me give you a very simple example:

A friend of mine who is very good at photography, wanted to be a professional photographer and he never though anything else than clicking photos. He was passionate and ready to sacrifice anything for his passion. This was the situation with him almost 3-4 years back and now he is working as a Team Leader of tech support for an MNC. When I met him, four days back, I asked him “What happened to your photography?” and he simply replied “My parents didn’t allow me” then I said “You shouldn’t have left it, you were so good at it. You can carry it along with your job” and he said “I don’t get time”

 About 70% of youngster gives the same reason of parents for not being able to carry on with their passion and it’s not an excuse, it’s just one of the way through which you lie to yourself. It means that all the things you did in your life were allowed by your parents? When you needed money, was it allowed by your parents? But you convinced them then why this can’t be done when it is about your life.

Many people blame the society of India and its culture for not being able to carry on with their passion and they try to match the western society and its culture and say “They are free to choose their life and that’s why they were able to carry on with their passion”. Then what are your views about Nassrudin shah, who didn’t invite his parents on his first act because it was not allowed by his parents, did he quit? No, because rather than blaming anyone in future he decided to have belief on his passion. Many celebrities, sports persons, musicians of India were not supported by their family for carrying their passion in life but they chose to live life on their own terms rather than thinking about the society and relatives. It’s not about the thinking of India which pulls youngsters away from choosing their life rather than just doing a job, getting married, having kids and blaming time, money, family society for this life in which they were sent do something else and they lived their whole life as a hallucination, but it’s about how you decide to take things in your hand.

One of the biggest reason is lack of confidence because most of the youngster think that if something goes wrong in a life chosen by their parents, they will have them to blame but if anything goes wrong in a life chosen by them, they will have to be answerable for that.

Now another big excuse is how to manage your job and your passion, if both are different. So let me give you an example of Amish Tripathi, the author of Shiva Triology. He wrote his books while doing his job. A job is not a 24/7 engagement which doesn’t gives you time. On an average, a man doing a job gets 6 hours of leisure time. It can be less also but if managed properly, you will get time for yourself for sure. I have seen many bands in which the members are doing a full time job and carrying on with their band also.

So rather than blaming India and its society, it is better to change your own thinking. I am not saying that you should leave your job or leave other responsibilities but you should never quit on the things at which you are good and which is your passion.