One question at the forefront of my mind most times is: how can I live a meaningful life? I have sought answers from religion and books and watched the lives of many whom I believe have lived rich and meaningful lives. I have realised, after many voyages, the fact that life is a long episode of figuring things out.
Like me, you are also yet to find yourself. You constantly vacillate between passionate intensity and cold cluelessness. You are constantly wondering and counting on your fingers your interests and how aligned you are to the paths you have carved out for yourself. And after many years, it’s still surprising that you do not know how to live yet.
I do understand what it feels like to wake up, and it breaks your heart. I understand what it feels like to spend the day doing work that grates your soul with its meaninglessness. Or how the mind gets numbed in some mindless capitalist pursuit.
Like you, too, I wonder what my talents may be and how they weave into the grand tapestry of the universe. I wonder what it means to pour one’s soul into a life’s work and to find fulfilment in doing one thing for a lifetime. I wonder if I’d ever find such grace as focus and mindfulness. If I’d ever live above my fears of lack and want. If I’d ever become free from material and economic needs.
Also, like you, in my need for social relevance and acceptance, I’m beginning to vet my interests and proclivities on the basis of what is en vogue. I have found myself gallivanting on the orifice of a tech career and the rigours of the corporate world. Like you, I also thought that these were already proven paths that can lead to material success. I have to do what I must do even if it is not what I want to do; isn’t this the common conflict of adulthood?
Like you, I spend a ridiculous number of hours on different social media platforms, and it’s unequivocal that I am being programmed to think in a certain way. Cancel culture now means that I am constantly trimming my thoughts and ideas to appeal to the court of public opinion. Like you, I also weigh the importance of my thoughts on metrics such as likes, retweets, and impressions. How have I come to assume that more numbers are a validation of my ideas?
Like you, I am also thinking of how to be successful most of the time. How to become a renowned and famous person–which is not a bad ambition as I have always believed that the world is not entirely derelict as we think it is; it’s just that the better and more upright individuals are in the silent majority. The stupid ones are just louder with their opinions. Sometimes, I crave fame for the purpose of amplifying rectitude, if I dare say.
But the danger of this is that I am beginning to shapeshift into whatever form that may put me on the path of becoming successful. I am beginning to rearrange my aspirations to be more grander and to have some mass appeal. I have mistaken enviableness as success.
Like you, I also want to leave my fatherland for greener pastures. And for a long time, I was bothered that my reluctance could be akin to complacency. Am I settling for less? Am I self-sabotaging? I remind myself that I am destined for more and should reach for the stars, but what if I am not happy in the stars? What if I just want to be planted in the ground, to my roots? Is this desire a sign of my unambitousness?
Like you, I also worry about getting old. The year is already ending, and the days seem to pass at the speed of a blink. I find myself constantly measuring my growth with some distant metrics that are not tailored to my private aspirations
How many courses have I completed this year? How many books have I read? How much money did I make? How many clothes, shoes, gadgets, and ornaments did I add to my collection? Even the most self-aware of us often carry out this measurement mentally and feel less by our standing when compared to what others are flaunting on Instagram or LinkedIn.
Who measures the number of mornings you woke even more resolute after surviving an anxious episode the previous night? Who measures how often you keep going, even when it seems like everything around you is determined to break you? Who measures the number of times you were sad by your increased awareness of your inadequacies?
It is difficult to live true to ideals when we are constantly distracted by the next big and shiny thing. I am trying to define and calibrate my success metrics and one of the challenging questions I am forced to answer daily is What does success mean to you? Because, like you, I am also losing my individuality while morphing into shapes and forms that may fit into the mould of success as defined by others. What if success is just the tenderness of getting old with a woman that I love and loves me, too, while surrounded by kiths and kins with the moral fortitude to choose their happiness?
It is difficult not to constantly live in these fears, especially in this socio-economic contraption we find ourselves—where dreams die on the altar of survival. A time when the hustle culture is now a national identity, and it seems like greed and profits are the only motivation for our being.
It is tiring living this way. It is tiring being young but not having the luxury and freedom of being young. This survival is tiring, and like you, I also wonder if it will be this way for a long time. I am becoming rather pessimistic that the future holds better promises.
However, despite these enormous mental burdens clouding clear thinking, I am excited by the little patches of my life within my control. Like how much I can improve my writing by practising more and better. Like how much knowledge I have access to and how I can chisel my mind to become more acute through deliberate studies.
I am grateful that despite the perceived limitations, people around me break boundaries and expand the locus of my preconceived possibilities. I am grateful for the clear thinkers I come across daily, who, through their penchant for earnestness, have taught me to aim for the ideals and to believe that the universe, despite its randomness, always conspires to help us realise our dreams.
I am also learning that my success is a private affair and that I do not need to make my life performative. I am learning that my paths are mine and that while I may be intensely focused on the end goal, the happiness I seek is in the journey.
Lastly, I am finding my faith again. I am accepting that the questions are just as fundamental as the answers, and there will always be more of the questions than my finite mind can answer. As Chesterton would say, “Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.”
I am learning to believe in the unbelievable. I am learning that while I may be destined for more, I am not here to live for myself. I am also learning that the secret to finding myself is to lose myself in the service of others.
And despite my fears of loss and failure, I am strengthened by the words of Victor Frankl: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s way.”
For truly, how can I lose when I came here with nothing?
I love every bit of your writings. ✨️