Jun 5, 2021
Tunnel Vision
The world we look is much greater than our perception. I am 23 and it took me 23 years to realise this. Being in India, the Indian education system led me to take science, pursue engineering and be a software developer. When I was in 10th standard, I wanted to take science, and I don’t know why I wanted to take it. I was good at studies, so I figured other branches were not as good and the good graders always take science. There were some people around me who were more aware than me. They were thinking about which branch to take from a career perspective, about what kind of life they would lead. They were concerned, that they were going to take a life altering decision of their life. I, on the other hand was thinking how stupid they are to even think this. Why would someone leave science to take commerce or arts ? Even the school teachers and the society we live in, support this kind of mentality. For me the path was clear, take science, then take up engineering and then finally earn a lot of money. One of my elder sister was also an engineer, and she was considered the smarter one, out of my two sisters. My other sister took commerce, and she was somehow considered less intelligent by most of my relatives. As I got old, I realised it was not true. Apart from family experiences, my school used to idolize science students who got into good engineering colleges. So, taking science and getting into a good engineering college became a norm. Till 9th standard, I had no idea about any good Indian college. As soon as I entered 10th standard, I got to know about all these. I also got to know from seniors that they had to even join coaching to get into these colleges because the seats were limited and the exam was tough. So after breaking the tunnel to take science, I entered into a new tunnel where I had to get into IIT. Now, let’s expand some horizon here and what things I still did not know. I did not know where IIT stood internationally. I did not know that international colleges are much easier to get in. Even though they are expensive, but there are some cheap ones too. 2 years of my life went by. I was fortunate enough by the grace of God, that somehow, I got into a good engineering college. Before starting the college, I got into a tunnel to get a dream job with a hefty package or get a Master’s degree from USA and finally live the American dream. 4 years, I worked to satisfy these two things, balancing hard between them, not letting any one of them fall behind. At the end, I had an option to choose both of them. Considering my parents’ financial situation, I decided to pursue job for sometime. During college, I met great people across India. They introduced me to the startup world. When I entered college, I did not know that, it was also an option. But, as you can start a startup anytime in your life, that area is still left unexplored. Doing first year of the job, I just worked to learn more things and get promoted. Then came, the pandemic — which changed completely my world view…….
I got more time to think, read and invest on myself. I, being a kind of person who does not like to sit idle even for a minute, tried to expand my horizons. I started to learn about investing, new technologies, different types of business around the globe. It also made me retrospect and stop for a moment to think, do i really want this to be my life ?? Now, let’s go back. All of my decisions were based on what people around me were doing and seemed to earn more money than others. I thought that getting a good job with a good package would be the end goal. That would give me enough money to not think what I want to buy, help the complete world, remove poverty and gain power. But nothing of this happened….. No salary is big enough to let you buy a house of your own in 1 , 2 , or even 3 years. You need atleast 10 years just to get the downpayment of your house on any salary that you have. This amount is equivalent to treating cancer for just 2 people. So, if an emergency strikes, you do not have enough money. Yes, you would lead a comfortable life but not a safe one. You can be easily trampled by someone in power or some small businessman in your area. That businessman, who does not even know how to spell “entrepreneurship”. This is not just true for India but for the whole world. Even getting a salary of $150K ~ INR 1.2 crores, leaves you with same issues. Because you won’t be living at your parents house on that salary, you would be in USA living on rent in San Francisco area, and you are free to check the rent prices or house prices there. This is true for whatever management degree or PHD you have. Also, you won’t be working at the same pace as you are working at age 22, at age 40. So you need to find a way to generate the same if not more income even if you start working less by that time, to sustain the life you create with a family with your kids who you would be supporting. All of this made me think, do I really need one more degree to lead the same life ? Do I really need to get into more debt to lead the same life as I am currently living ? Obviously, no. So what should I do ? I saw startup owners are billionaires. So, I thought I should get an idea and work on it. But, this time, before getting into the tunnel, I researched on people who did startups. I found, that the life they live was not easy, and it was not the life that I wanted. And all the founders, would always sync with the idea that, the reason to start a startup should be just to solve a problem, nothing else. You can really make it successful, if you really want to solve that problem. While researching on all this, I found various areas of work where people make equivalent money. These include: social media marketing, content creation, real estate, stock market and cryptocurrency investors, artists etc. One thing, which was common amongst everything was that, everyone was selling something. Some their time, some a product, some a service. I did not know about any of these before the pandemic and many people live like me. I did not know that youtube content creators are millionaires and all of them definitely did not take science. I did not know that youtube was a revenue generation platform. I did not know that money in the bank was waste, and you should actually invest it to retain its value. Also, I learned about the concept of financial independence, which a lot of us have not even heard about. With all of these things, I realised getting a degree, or studying a particular subject was not important. The most important thing is to be able to find what you really love, because you can only get best at that and then learn to sell it. Most of us do not know how to sell anything. I have still not sold any single thing in my life, not even on OLX. Reading about all this, I realised that you can gain money doing anything, if you do it well and are able to sell it. So, you should only do something what you really love, and get best at and it. This alone would open various selling opportunities. Though, this is just my opinion, there might be some people, who sell something they don’t love. I would really like to know such stories.
For me, I realised money is not the priority. The things I want is living at a peaceful place, close to nature, doing something which I can do all day and make some change in the life of people in the world who have not been as fortunate as me. The priority is to give a meaning to the life. I used to think that money is the tool to get there, but I think I was wrong. It is the opposite. If you start living the life, doing only what you love, I think money would never be an issue. Now, when I look back, thinking about what stream to choose, was actually really important. It is not because it decides what subjects I will read, but the kind of people that I will meet. Even though for me, if I could go back, I would still choose the same path. But this is not true for many. The people around you make you or break you, because you just find something from them and do it in your own unique way. They open up some horizons and a way of thinking, with which you have never thought before. So, going to a good college is not important for getting a good package in a MNC, it is important to meet the right people. Going abroad for studies has also the same reason. Most of us defeat this reason, not creating a big enough network and learning from people around and just focussing on our tunnelled goals, making us regret at the end of our lives.There are new things coming everyday, and the things which are gold today will be silver someday. To survive, in a changing world, we need to adapt and be the part of this change.
To all the people reading this article, I just want you to answer this one simple question — “ Do you know what are NFT’s ?”. If you do not know the answer to this, you do not know a lot of other things too. Now, I think back upon the opportunities I lost, I do not see, not getting into IIT a big loss, but I definitely see, learning a guitar at a young age, learning about financial independence and investing and learning about how to sell things, the biggest 3 mistakes of my life till now. I loved guitar, but I did not learn it, considered other things as priority. Investing always seemed as an unimportant activity. Selling things seemed being unsuccessful at getting a job. My world view was limited, even after the presence of internet, because I did not know what to search. I was completely living in the dark tunnel, which I wanted to cross as I saw light at the end of it, but as soon as I reached the end the tunnel, just got longer…………
