The reason of being You!

-> If you were to go tomorrow, would you say you lived a meaningful life?
-> What is your identity?
-> What are your values? Do your life choices align with them?

I just finished 'When Breath Becomes Air' by Paul Kalanithi. He wrote this book just before his death. It's an account of his thought provoking journey from being a curious student to a doctor to a patient to a father, written with the clear perspective of someone who is terminally ill.

Some thoughts really stood out for me - 

"You can't ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving." He says this in the context of actively engaging with death as he tries to help his patients beat death, while knowing fully well the deck is stacked against him and that death always wins. This is a beautiful phrasing of what we all experience everyday.

"Before operating on a patient's brain, I must first understand his mind: his identity, his values, what makes his life worth living, and what devastation makes it reasonable to let that life end." The context is the judgement a neurosurgeon has to make when planning high risk operations. A millimetre of difference can debilitate the patient in various ways.

"When you come to one of the many moments in life where you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man's days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing." His message to his baby daughter who was 9 months old when he died.

"In the end, it cannot be doubted that each of us can see only a part of the picture. The doctor sees one, the patient another, the engineer a third, the economist a fourth, the pearl diver a fifth, the alcoholic a sixth, the cable guy a seventh, the sheep farmer an eighth, the Indian beggar a ninth, the pastor a tenth. Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete." He says in his search for truth.

When you see life from a dying person's eyes, it shines a light on how you've lived your own. And for me, sadly, it doesn't look good. 

But it's never too late to begin to strive for that asymptote. My line will perhaps remain a bit farther from the curve but, if I start now then perhaps by the end of my life, I'd still have made a journey towards that imaginary point where the line meets the curve and perfection lies.

So, is it destiny or you?

My mom told me today for the 64,783,726th time not to worry and that whatever happens happens for good. Not to mention, I agreed with her on phone.

But then, is it really so?

When something happens one way and your life takes one direction, you start moving in that direction. And if you are inherently inclined to work hard, you turn that whatever way to your advantage and earn a reputation. You become an achiever in your area. And then people look at you and tell you "See! Had you got the other thing at that time in the past, you would not be this. You would not have achieved all this."

There appears a clear causation fallacy in such observations. If you had got that thing you wanted in the past, you would simply have taken a different direction, worked equally well and achieved similar results.

Wouldn't you have?

A walk through the dark night..

"Dude, look at the last year's shortlists - No one below 3.89/4 shortlisted by McKinsey, BCG, A T Kerney..." said my engineering classmate who has joined me here too. The guy is serious about this claim and has hit 4/4 in Term I. But he is still mourning the 'screwup' in Term II in which he thinks he will have to be content with only 2 A's and the rest 2 A-'s (=3.75/4), a portfolio of grades that would make most sensible people here open Champagne in the beautiful SV grounds under the cloudy night.

"No dude, I saw at least one guy shortlisted at 3.6 something. There may be more. I didn't check all." I said.

I have scored 3.75 in Term I and as usual, am very optimistic about the top tier consulting firms offering me a position, not just because I have good grades but because of my entire resume.

"No man! Then look at that guy's other activities too. He had done quite a lot." He suggested me.

This was a typical Sunday afternoon in the dining hall.

This is one year at a place that offers many opportunities to grow across several dimensions. Nobody is clear what is right. Everybody has come in with his own set of priorities and his own perception of success. In any conversation on what is right for the future and what is not, there is tremendous opinion clash. Some are going all out for grades because that's seriously all they have ever known. Some are fighting for grades under peer pressure to make it to top tier consulting firms. Surprisingly a few guys who were happily 6 point someones at IIT are slogging for 4/4 here. This is the last platform to a great career, they would tell you - right or wrong, nobody knows, not even the alumns. Some would tell you not to focus too much on grades and do other things too but the hesitation in the voice gives out way too much - They are really not sure what would work in this market.

A substantial chunk of student population - those still trying to make sense out of the chaos and determined not to be the part of a meaningless rat race - meets in fragments on cloudy night walks around the academic center and asks others of the group whether it's really right to succumb to the peer pressure and register for all those industry projects or business plan competitions just because everybody else is working hard to add that extra line to their resume that might signal their superior level of willingness to join the AAA rated recruiters and to prepare some material for those 5 minutes of interview that would make the entire difference between the upper casts and the untouchables of Corporate India.

You should listen to those fighting souls on those dark night walks. The confident adults in business are nervous students for sometime. One puts hands around the other's shoulders and tries to comfort them on the same dilemma that is eating himself within. Nobody is just ignoring academics here. We are infact getting above average grades. After that level of hard work, should we really not do what we want to do - play football everyday, do gym, go swimming, dance, perhaps look for a special someone...or..is it really a sin here to think of relaxation - mental or physical. And they listen to each other. In half an hour of each other's company, they feel better and go back to their rooms, read the latest issue of The Economist, something they so wanted to do from the last four days, do some course reading and get lulled into a peaceful sleep.

The day breaks with sun shining through the flimsy curtains, there is a lot to do today. Morning classes, some afternoon assignments, an alum session from some AAA rated company in the evening, discussions with numerous classmates throughout and the day ending in hesitation at 7.30 in the evening whether to go to the recreation center or to pitch for the new industry projects posted this afternoon or may be go to the professional club's meeting to be a part of the focus group trying to organise some high profile conference on some esoteric management topic, not because that's what they want to do, but because who knows networking might come in handy for a good job tomorrow and of course 'Key member of the organising committee of So&So summit' might give them a spike on the resume. 'Might' because nobody is sure..

At 11.30 in the night, I look out of my window into the cloudy sky and pick up the phone "Aloke, want to come for a walk for sometime?"

Second among equals...

I am under tremendous pressure. Everybody here is so damn focussed on marks. Whenever in my past I have got marks, I have worked very very hard for them, forsaking everything else. And today I see two choices:

- Work single mindedly hard and match 'em.

- Keep getting average + 2/3 marks and work towards things I deem important for my personality.

Anyone with a common sense would tell me to choose the second. I want to do that. But it's not 2008. The pressure here in this market is tremendous. Consulting firms shortlist on the basis of grades and you got to be among the top 50 to crack one of those. Though there are several other relevant arguments too:

- If I only focus on marks, then I do not develop other aspects of my personality that I clearly find important. This might also come in my way of shortlist by the top consulting firms.

- I might harm myself in the long run too by not developing 360 degrees.

- Obviously, I am not happy.

But the market is really bad and all of us are in a huge debt now. What if we don't even land a decent paying job with average marks!

I always get myself into such situations when I want to fast forward life and be certain of what happened eventually. When will I start to live the present!

Little bit to learn from everybody...everybody

Sometimes you wish

you could go back in time

and do the things differently

just a little bit...

The Goal...

When I was a child, I liked Sachin Tendulkar. I remember that I cut out and kept a photograph of him with Sir Don Bradman when the former went to meet the later on his 91^st birthday. I was a small kid then, incapable of achieving anything more than a first position in class, so I took a vicarious pleasure in the achievements of my heroes. As time passed and I grew up, a sense of tremendous self respect and independence began to take over. Now I wanted to achieve all such things myself and take pleasure in my own moments of glory. 

I don’t follow cricket now and I care least about celebrities. Today, Sachin achieved the milestone of being the highest run getter in international test cricket and at night I happened to switch to a channel that was airing a live interview with him on his new achievement. I suddenly remembered those old moments when I cut that photograph and when I read an article about his upcoming 24^th birthday in the local Hindi daily, multiple times and so lovingly. 

A sudden rush of emotions and a reminder of an old promise to the self – that is the league I have to belong to.

Change...

I don’t want to give MBA so much importance in my life as to write posts about every milestone in its way. This is just a course that gives one skills to succeed in business. I want to learn those skills. And yes, a few bits of personal growth that come with good diversity and competent faculty at a good B school. That’s all in it for me. I have brought myself out from the possibility of an unknown future into a phase where I see a glimmer of doing something in life. I need this education now to take myself to the level of a global leader.

I have never been inclined towards selling myself to people in interviews, neither for job nor for education. But in this fast paced, highly competitive world, all the selectors can know about a candidate is what he tells them about himself. I know this but I don’t practice this. I will have to accept it soon and behave accordingly. Though selling the self doesn’t seem fulfilling to me, for whatever end.

The recent interview that I had would be the last one where I didn’t even attempt to sell myself when I easily could. The selectors may easily have missed some aspects of my personality that could have defined my selection. Results would not be out for over a month and the likelihood is that of acceptance, despite an unsatisfactory interview performance from my side, but still, I feel that I need to change myself in this sense. And so I would. Today, my thoughts have both the sides. On one hand, one last satisfaction remains – that if I make it in this effort of mine then I will have been selected despite not having even shown the level of my true self. And then, on the other hand, I think that it would have been more satisfying if only I had shown my actual level of thoughts. The second thought predominates. That’s why I say that I would change myself now on in this sense.

All those clichés that I read in the books look so practical now. You never end learning throughout your life. And change is the way of life.

Sodium's Self Realization...

There are only two types of IITians :

Those who have brains...
...I belong to the other ones !