Get (un)Settled
In Life
You should
get settled in life.
Study hard
so you can get a good degree.
Be an
engineer, a doctor, a chartered accountant or at the very least, at least an
MBA!!!
Work hard
so you can get a good job.
Keep
working so you can get a good salary.
Get
settled. Get married. Have kids.
Get your
own home. That guy is getting ahead.
Enter home
loan, car loan, this loan and the other loan.
Now repeat
this story with your kids. Get them settled too.
Sounds familiar? I am sure it does…
Ever since I remember language, I remember these
words, “Get settled in life.”
Interestingly though ever since I remember my
beginning to question myself, I understood the meaning of get settled in life.
What does it mean?
For those of us nicely settled down in life, this
is what it really means:
Settle for the second best (or worse) in life?
Don’t’ you dare try to be the best in life? And don’t you even dare to think of
pursuing anything you associate passion with.
I can guarantee you with absolute certainty that as
an 18-year-old passionate adult with a belief of your own, you wanted to be
someone else, someone other than the person whose visiting card has your name
on it.
That’s sad.
Why did it happen? After all getting settled isn’t
a bad thing to do. I mean there is nothing wrong with being 2nd best
too.
Well, that’s right. Nothing wrong. It disturbs you
because you know you could have been more.
Our parents, our teachers, our elders, whoever it
is that urged us to get settled in life, did it for one reason and one reason
only – they didn’t want us to fail. Rather they didn’t want to see us failing.
Or rather, they wouldn’t know what they will do if we failed (after all they
didn’t fail).
In the name of getting settled, getting an income
going, taking on family responsibility or whatever it is you told your
revolting brain, you accepted being 2nd best (probably a lot worse).
You accepted mediocrity. You probably made peace with it too as you went along.
You probably told yourself and reinforced beliefs such as, ‘that’s the way life
is’, ‘I sacrificed for my family’, ‘I wasn’t good enough to be a dancer,
musician, cricketer, film star, writer……’, ‘my realities didn’t permit’……. Blah
blah blah blah blah…..
I don’t care what you told yourself. No one at 18
is good enough for that. You weren’t good enough then for what you are today
anyway.
You got settled. And you got settled to embrace
mediocrity. And you have been embracing it ever since.
My friend, there is just one life. It ain’t coming
back. When will you live?
Getting settled?
Uhhh! let’s reserve it for the grave.
There’s a life to live here.
When you have accepted to get settled in life, there are two things that happen,
One – your
life is constantly guided by ‘avoidance of pain’. Meaning that your actions are motivated or guided
by instances and things that will help you avoid any pain or failure. You are
not guided by the pleasure that an opportunity may bring upon you, the pain
that the failure may cause you guides you.
Even today the thoughts will cross your mind and I
know it does, to do something bigger, something better, to live fuller, to go
travel, to be ‘you’… That’s wonderful in imagination. But then you open your
eyes and turn your back on these thoughts and get back on your desk. With eyes
wide opened what did you see that guided you? You saw the pain of losing status quo!! What id the other one doesn’t
work? What if I fail? How will I manage this? My responsibilities. My this. My
that.
You are more inspired by avoiding the pain that may
or may not occur than even giving yourself a shot at pleasure. That in fact was
a reason for accepting mediocrity in the first place. It continues years later
to be your light. It will continue and one fine day you will fade away after a
very long but a very unlived settled life.
Two – you
will constantly be guided by other people’s demands. Check this out. Your decision to get settled was
another person’s demand. You cannot (will not) take the risk to go do and be
who you want to be. In your second best option, there is still someone for
whose best option is being pursued through you. To his or her demands, you will
succumb every-time. You will have be guided, pulled and be compelled to adjust
yourself to it. This happens everyday, at work, at home.
Here are 4
signs that may indicate that you
have settled in life, whether in a relationship or a job or life:
Wishing
away time: Cant wait for lunch?
For work to finish? For weekend? Or at home for Weekend to finish? If you loved
what you did, you wouldn’t wish away time.
Finding it
hard to wake up in the morning:
When you are living life, you are excited about the joy of possibilities that
the day will bring in to you, and at that moment no one can snooze the alarm.
Dreaming
of a completely different life: I
am personally happy if you are at least doing this. Dreaming of something
completely different is a sign that the current one isn’t fulfilling.
Distractions: how much of your time gets spend in distractions?
– alcohol, shopping, movies, drugs, sex, mindless parties, mindless travel…..
Get UNSETTLED in life. Settling down hasn’t brought
you any great joy or happiness, at least no the best of it. And you deserve the
best. Creator sent you to this world not to be mediocre.
Yes your mind will show you images of things that
will go wrong. I know you have to think about family, lifestyle, or some other
crap. Yes its true but you got to embrace the temporary failure, the temporary
loss to get the ultimate joy.
In fact the problem of settling has been the
problem of not experiencing failure. I would say that if you haven’t
experienced failure, then what the hell have you done in life?
Move on.
There is still only one life. It is passing you by.
Unsettle. Please do.
Yours,
Chetan Walia.
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