Monday, March 15, 2010

Of molds, stereotypes and happiness.

It is said that a man becomes a philosopher when he’s not happy with his wife.

For the average, working 20-something these days, the phrase might well apply to professional life. It’s amazing how much a job can take over life’s rhythm and patterns. For 20 years of our life we slowly graduate from play to study to work. We learn to equate happiness to doing something we love doing and doing it well. Many opinions shape our lives and slowly we go off-track. Potential artists become doctors and future engineers turn to sales and marketing.

Nurtured in a sea of stereotypes, it’s still difficult to mix and match the right ones in a formula that suits a particular individual pretty much exactly. Many break out of the moulds set for them. Some make it to the peaks they aimed at, many don’t. There’s an ocean of people out there who’d rather be doing something vastly different and there’s many more who don’t know what precisely they ought to be doing anyway.

Every now and then I find myself marveling at the zest which some people carry on at work. Here’s one type, the type that makes the things they do work for them and derive happiness therein. It’s a pleasant place to be in. Curiosity arises almost naturally and they seem to apply it in all the right places. They’re the ones that used the mold to get them happiness; they’re the ones that tick off milestones.

How then does one set about finding out how to keep oneself occupied and happy. Is the exercise of identification and implementation enough? Yes I think, but not always. As people grow, they change and with that change, one must evolve, as opposed to resist. Life works in strange ways; each twist, turn and straight road will lead only to the road’s end. How we find happiness along the way is up to us.

1 comment:

Suri C said...

nice! makes a HELL LLOT of sense!!! 18 months of WORKING.. and i'm still the "...many more who don’t know what precisely they ought to be doing anyway..."!!! :P