Live life on your terms
Some of the dreaded questions that this gen asks –
1. What do you do for a living? (in the last few years it has got scary)
2. What is your educational qualification?
3. Where do you live? (location: Country including PinCode) and
4. What car do you drive?
Frankly there is a big mafia out there which will size you up on ANY one of these answers.
What do you do has some sexy answers which people love –
‘I am a neurosurgeon’ – and ‘I am a dentist or a gynaec’ or
‘I am a CA’, ‘I am a Venture capitalist’, ‘I am an equity trader’
or ‘I am a fund manager’…obviously there are others who will say ‘I am working in…..’ or ‘I am a school teacher’………..
Similarly the car you drive, the location where you live, the clubs to which you belong, – each of these are a ‘leading’ question!
Based on your answer, the person will evaluate you, bracket you, and generally decide where you should be in life. Then they will compare you to THEIR mental image of where they think you should have been (if they know you for say 40 years or 80% of your life whichever is smaller)…and say ‘you remember that dodo in school, can you believe …..he is now a…….’
This is good fun, if you can step out of your body and enjoy the thought process. Is it possible that you have inherited a lot of money, got a fantastic degree in Fine Arts, work as a school teacher, be a good photographer, drive around in a fantastic car and stay in a pathetic house?
Well these guys will pull their hair, because they will not be able to typecast you – and that for them, THAT is traumatic.
You need guts to ‘prioritize’ very differently from what society decides you ‘should’ do. For example I know a kid who saves every rupee because the is planning to climb the Everest in about 5 years time. The Financial budget for the same? Rs. 30 Lakhs + inflation over 5 years. He does not spend a penny on eating out, fancy clothes, vacations, NOTHING – the clear focus is on getting the corpus ready. Not sure how many of his friends are ‘happy’ with that!!
A friend of mine was learning astrology from his father. One day his father gave him a horoscope and said ‘tell me is this a good horoscope”.
My friend looked at it and said “Omg, no!”.
His father said: “Tell me why?”
My friend said: “No college education, no recognised degree, no foreign trips, no marriage, no kids, no house, no car…..yuck this is really lousy.”
His father said: “This is the problem. I asked you for a view…you have given me YOUR VIEW, not just the facts…
This, my dear son is the horoscope of Kanchi Kamathoti Peetham’s Shankaracharya.
LuckyOye
My Dream answers to your questions!:
1. What I do for a living? Nothing…don’t need to work, out of the rat race.
2. What’s my educational qualification?… Why? What do you want to know? I’ll get you in touch with the right expert.
3. Where do I live? Lots of places actually…NY, LA, Waikiki, Hamburg, Zurich, Sydney, Dubai, Mumbai (006!).
4. What car do I drive?… None, my drivers drive ALL my cars.
Why are these dreaded questions though? They are dreaded by immature folks, in my opinion. Those that know/understand different levels of positions, have lots of ambitions, but either don’t have sufficient talent & discipline to achieve the desired level of success or haven’t had sufficient luck in their efforts. Sometimes time is not on their side or the timing is off by a few years.
How many people in India could become the prime minister by 40? So if you’re 41 and not the PM of India, should you consider yourself useless? How about by 63? or 82? (For folks who don’t know, these are Rajiv Gandhi, Narendra Modi, and Morarji Desai)
AGP
Yes. you are true. Now days it is getting more and more. Kids who are in colleges are expecting salaries according to there grades(in same ratios) and parents too. If some body gets in to Google,MS with lesser grades. Imagine the the stress of the guy who is topping the class, though he is already having some decent job but failed in Google and MS.
when kid is going school, most of the parents want their kid to be in the top!!, in colleges too. Then top job, nice car, good villa, if possible one or two flats in reputed builders, etc. Life is full of pressure.
Once, while talking to a friend I came to know that, he never seen a sunflower plant. I really surprised to hear this, because he is from the region where sunflower cultivation is so huge. I just asked him to go to his home town over the weekend and just roam around the fields, so that he will come to know the lot of new things in life. Life is not always maintaining the top ten.
Not just the sunflower plant, I hope one’s life term is not sufficient to explore the world. Toooo many things are there. We can see people who spent decades of their life term just in bird watching, photography,fishing,gardening or just wandering the places etc. If you are waiting for standard Indian retirement age, you will miss a lot. There are just 3k odd tigers are left in the wi(or)ld! and We have left with just 250 odd Great Indian Bustards!. Will you get a chance to see these. Not just wild life, as I mentioned, there are toooo many things.