Which Is The One Chapter Of Your Life That Stands Out?

As one more year ends, and a new one starts, R and S retrospect on their lives and the part of it which stood out.

R says: We (or at least me) are ordinary people with ordinary lives. And if we die ordinary without any noticeable achievements, would any of our chapters be worthy enough to stand out?

And well, stand out to whom? To the World People? To Myself? To my kids?

I do not want to answer the question with questions.

Of course I can’t foretell the future, but the way life has been till now, I do not foresee myself spearheading changes which could make me famous. Nor have I, till date, the way I see it – made a huge difference in anyone’s life.

When I stepped out of home to go to a University in a different country

However, if I look back, there are things which have happened which at that point in time I could not have imagined would have. And the person I am right now, I would attribute to those events.

Hence to me, those are events. And for me, that chapter stands out.

Maybe it was those times or my family, but stepping out of the country for University was a big deal at home. Rules were – stay at home – pick a university which gets you back at home in the evening – once done with University try and get married.

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A 16 year old me had different plans for myself.

I had a well defined career route in my head for which I had to go through a course which would not keep me at home. Amidst fights and tears and more fights, I left home.

And the challenge did not end there. Life without mummy was not a bed of roses. But I lived and loved it!

My ideas and mindset broke barriers the way I could never imagine they would. My life experiences then are confidential material, but I am very proud of the person they made me.

If I had stayed at home, my life course would have been very different and I might have been a very different person too.

Hence that decade of my life from 18 to 28… definitely a stand out chapter for me.

You S?

I wish I could have chosen my path differently

S says: When my kid plays video games, eventually her avatar dies and she gets to restart again. Some of the things seem boring to do over again, but at the crucial points if she changes her course of action, the course of her game changes drastically!

I wish life was like that – full of do-overs at crucial junctions. We’d know what mistakes we needed to fix or which routes were wrong for us.

If I got a chance for a do-over it would be picking my line of work. I just didn’t have the clarity or the maturity to know what I wanted to do in life or rather what I wanted from life per se.

Back then, unfortunately, being an engineer or a doctor seemed to be the only ‘good’ career choices – and my decision was based on what I didn’t want more than what I did.

But choosing a path based on fears or avoidances never does anyone any good. It is at best a ‘safe’ choice which has probably served its purpose.

I do wonder how my decision will affect how I advise my daughter though, when the time comes. Will I urge her to follow her dreams wherever they lead her? Or will I point her towards the familiar safe path I’ve walked on?

And what if the safe path is the right path after all?

The only do-over we get is when it comes to our kids. They are our avatars (or so we’d like to think). Like it or not, our badly written chapters affect our choices with the way we raise our kids. How we rewrite them is the question.

Image source: a still from the film Angry Indian Goddesses

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