Me

I have always believed that there are two types of people: Those who do things exactly as per convention, and those who do things exactly against the convention. Then, I met the third kind: Me. The statement may look inspired, but the inner meaning is what my conscience conspired.

There are some people who do things exactly the way they have to be done. They don't take risks, they go by the book. From their clothes to their career choices, they do everything the way legend has it. Take the option, analyse pros and cons, and see what similar people in similar predicaments did earlier and proceed the same way. No risks, no tensions. Everything is planned. Maktub! sort of thing... But then, life isn't an assembly of some machine where you do evrything as it is to be done. Variety is the spice of life, and sometimes everyone must tread a different path. What life is it if you haven't done things not be done or if you haven't done things that have never been done?

Then, there are people who feel that variety is life. They go against everything. If something is convention, they are against it. Never anything routine, never anything common, always in a mad rush to stand apart from the crowd. But, why? Why should you take risks which will more probably give you failure than success? Why risk some good opportunities just because they are with the stream? Why not do something as per the norm, if the norm is good and enables you to be sanguine?

Then, I am. I am somewhere in between these. I want to tread paths untouched, I want to do things avant garde, I want to do things very rarely done or have never been done, but then I cant risk everything. I want to be sanguine, I want to be at a place where I know even if the stream is against me, the shore is so near that a leap will take me to safer grounds. I want to be away from the crowd, but only as far where if there is a storm, I can jump into the crowd. I want to set examples, but I am afraid I may not be a Derozio. For that matter, I dont want to be Mr. ABC who has not done anything interesting or different all his life, and led a life which no one remembers!

Sometimes, I am very uncertain of what I want in life, but then I always carry the fire in me that I want something which satiates every bit of me. What I am doing, what I have done, and what I will be doing have been/is/will be satisfactory for sure I know, but still I want something else. Something more challenging, something more...

But then, all these come at a price, the price of risking my future. It may satiate me and my instincts, but then will it do justice to the societal constraints that bind me? Will it help me maintain a family, prosper as per what the society says? I don't need them, I don't want to maintain a family if I get something so out of the box that it will answer all my qualms, but what about the family that I have come from? Anyone who is making a career decision has to think of two things: The family that has brought him here, and the family that he will start making from here. Both are the same actually, but then the responsibilities of the individual in question are different in both paradigms!

Finally, the question stills sustains and I am sure a majority of people around me are in the same doldrums, just that they don't spit it out. Are we the first kind or the second kind or are we all the third kind which is more of a compromise than a trade-off.