I want that…..
If you have it
Most of the things that we chase in life are mostly driven by the things that people around us have. The things which we actually want are pushed away. This happens to me a lot. I am not sure, how many of you reading this also go through the same thing.
We live in an age of social media and everyone is trying to look good on it and somehow everyone has figured out to make it look that way. People can make everything glorified. Some people glorify their jobs, some people glorify the trips they are on, some people glorify the amount of fun they are having at a place. Everything just looks so charming, that it makes you want it all. The sad part is, it is only after doing it, that you find that it was not worth the hype. The same psychology goes into reviews about a place or a dish or even about a movie. I have been to some highly-rated places but found the food worse than the street food. I have been to some glorified tourist spots, where everyone posts selfies and even videos displaying the amount of fun they were having, and my reaction to those places sometimes is just Nayy…. And this was not just the case with me, everyone with me also did not enjoy the place or the food. People do not even dare to say that a place is bad because there is just too much peer pressure, that if everyone is liking it, we must also like it. These are some small examples, but this creeps on to the big things in life — like career choices. Most people want to have a startup, not because they have a passion for solving problems, but because everyone else is doing it and seems to be making a lot of money. People give up their current happy lives completely aspiring for a lifestyle which they saw on youtube because it seemed like the holy grail and then just suffer badly.
We just have become too much dependent on reviews, that we have forgotten that everyone can have a different opinion, different likes and dislikes and that’s the reason why democracy came into this world. Some things can be chosen on the basis of reviews — like Airbnb, cars, and even good restaurants sometimes. But, life choices, surely do not fall into that place. The sad part is no one actually shows the reality, but we surely know somehow that we actually want it or not.
There is a common career path in India — which is to do engineering and then do an MBA. A lot of people follow this. No one retrospects on why, it somehow seems a good option because everyone seems to do it. But this issue is not just limited to India, this is what this whole world shares. Everybody cannot like to be a travel vlogger, everyone cannot like to make youtube videos, everyone cannot want to build a startup or a business. But somehow, everyone wants it. A funny thing I observed was people, going to Bali for their honeymoon. Every second person, you ask, goes to Bali for their honeymoon. It got funny when some vegetarians also went and starved because of no good vegetarian options. Everyone on social media just seems to be having a killer life, and we are ready to give our lives up and take up their.
Each one of us derives happiness and pleasure from different sources in life. Some people like spending their evening alone at home, drinking a hot beverage, and doing something productive, whereas others might be out partying, hooking up, and just wasting away. Some might find their day job satisfying, while others might want to do something more, something big in life. But, we always find the grass on the other side greener. We are so stupid that we get into it and then we get ready to go through the whole shebang and then lead a toxic life. It just gets too hard to jump the ship and take the next boat because it would want a lot of effort.
The big question here to answer is, how do we actually find out what we really want? Well, most of us already know this deep down. Anything which goes against our nature, we just feel it inside. But some things, we just have to try. Therefore, I just want to take up all the possible professions in my life, to find what I really want. It is just really hard to defy peer pressure and do something from our own creativity. It just seems too easy to copy someone and gain as much success as them, but in my opinion, it is just completely impossible. There has to be something new and creative in anything we do, to actually make it successful. That’s the beauty of this world. Everyone doing the same thing has a different way of doing it which makes it beautiful. I think it is time to be grateful for what we have and realize how happy it makes us, rather than fantasizing about someone else’s life removing away all the negatives buried below.
