Today’s hangover has correlation with yesterday’s “moment of truth”. Obvious, duh!
We all get to choose between being an optimist and a pessimist. The ones who believe the cup is half full or half empty. On the surface, one of the easiest decisions one has to make. Optimism is good and pessimism is evil. Right?
The problem is, how can one be sure that water is exactly at the half level? Isn’t that where we all exist? We want to believe that the cup is at least half full. If you are bloody damn sure it is, we call ourselves eternal optimists (eternal?) but the moment we doubt that assumption, all hell breaks loose. What I mean by that is, we MBAs/PGDMs frantically start looking for new jobs. This brings me to my conundrum: What do we want to do?
Most of us have no fucking clue what we really want to do which is gibberish for saying we will crib no matter what we do. There are, of course, exceptions. Few don’t crib and a few know they want. These include people who have more pressing issues to be worried about, newly weds with their feet so high up in the sky they do don’t really care about “lesser mortals who run behind materialistic possessions”, the ones who are really satisfied with their life (the type I will never understand and hence I will safely assume don’t exist) and finally the ones who really do know what they want to do. Beware of one other variety. The ones who talk so confidently that you think they really know what they want but at the end of the day if you look back at all their actions, you will realize they are just better equipped to pfaff but really don’t form a part of any of the exceptions stated above.
The word which is is-all-and-end-all for most of us is PEERS. The dictionary definition might be different but the one I believe in: Everyone, we know of, who are doing better than us (Perception decides who’s better. You might be struggling in Antarctica thinking hell is very close but if I feel your life is better, you are in).
All of us live in hope. We all have heard of a friend of a friend of a distant relative who actually has no clue about accounting/sales/marketing/MIS/anything but works in a “dream company” doing what we all want to call “The dream job”. We all really believe that, one day, we will crack that code. The only problem is for most of us, the day never comes. Instead more stories will continue to pour in. And you tell yourself “This is the way the cookie crumbles. You lucky bastards.”.
I couldn’t end this without talking about the most noble of virtues as stated by almost all religions: Forgiveness. We all sit back and complain how this is a lost virtue but I beg to differ. Forgiveness still exists but with one condition: As long as you succeed. Let me give you an example to prove my case/vent my frustration. Being blatantly selfish is something I just couldn’t connect with, with a select few of my “peers”. But then, after two years at a B-school and the year after, I found why people didn’t care. Not only have people forgotten/forgiven what they did in the past but the very few who still remember are confronted with (or a few variations of the same): “Say whatever you want to. You couldn’t achieve what they could. You are plain jealous.” See, you are jealous.
P.S:
1. All the above characteristics have exceptions. If you don’t agree, you are an exception.
2. I do realize that in the end the race is long, people who were ahead have also fallen behind, you are someone else’s “peer”, etc.. But, standing here with a cup of water in my hand and accidently (so I claim) having poured half of it down the drain, I need someone to blame.
