I Am What I Am - But Are You?

Once a friend of mine told me about how he was upset for he couldn’t achieve a bit of what he wanted to while his peers got more than what they had expected. And this is what I told him:

Yaar tu apne aap ko unse kyon compare karta hai? Agar un se compare karne k baad tu decide karta hai ki tujhe kya milna chahiye to at the end of the day kya tu wahi person hai, agar tujhe wo mil bhi jaye jo tu chahta hai?

(Why do you compare yourself with your peers or your friends? If you decide on what you want after comparing yourself with them, will you remain the same person, as you were before, once you achieve what you had decided to get?)

All of us would agree to the fact that we all love ourselves and respect ourselves a lot. So how can we do such a big injustice to ourselves by letting ourselves go away from our individuality? How can we decide upon our likes after looking at the others? It’s our individuality which makes us unique and one of our kind. So how can we loose our individuality to achieve success? And that success too is in conventional terms, and not the way we visualise success to be.

Sometimes it is really hard to make out a niche following our hearts but those are the times when we need to believe in ourselves and stand by what we are. We can’t change what our heart truly desires and this truthfulness of heart decides what or who we are. As written by Novoneel Chakravorthy in one of his blog posts (http://nbconline.blogspot.com/2009/04/coordinates.html):

You may like the star just above your head or the one in the right or to the left perhaps but you got no right to question why the star to the left is in the left. I believe the point of our living is to find the coordinates where we know we belong and respect it irrespective of whatever difficulties or humiliation we encounter.

We clearly have to stand by what we are or what we want to do with our life without comparing ourselves with others. Everyone is different with a different view towards life, towards career or towards success. Then why does everyone need to move on the same predetermined path in the pursuit of success? And will that pursuit of success will really be the ‘pursuit of happiness’?

The other day Satya (http://satyavyas.wordpress.com/ ) told me not to give CAT 09 if I had no reason to give it. So TRUE!! Why is it necessary for every IITian to sit for CAT or GRE or IAS? Only because this is the trend and this is what everyone does and hence, it becomes our ‘birth duty’ to do it?

Even if one qualifies some exam of this kind (without knowing the reason for writing the exam even) by forcing himself very hard, won’t the success give a momentary happiness only?

It’s difficult to follow our heart when everyone seems to follow a well defined path which looks easy and simple. And at times, we might have to face hardships and mockery from people around us. But those who achieve greatness do so only because they, during some point of their lives, stay hungry and stay foolish.

If we want to make difference in our lives and in the world around us, we will have to travel on the less travelled path. And only on this less travelled path lies success in the true meaning of the term, a chance for full personal growth and true happiness for the soul.