Make it Count

Change is inevitable. Change is good. These are some of the quotes that most of us have been listening to and kind of have grown used to. But when it comes to actual change, how many of us are really good at accepting it. I have recently been going through some life altering changes. It has made me stronger, is to say the least. It has made me wonder what was I getting attached to? Getting so used to?

I have been part of the corporate culture since the last day of my studies. I have been yearning to see some other culture at work. Some other methodology at work. I have now decided to take that plunge. Find out for myself that if I have to run things how I would be different than the well established protocols. This has been metamorphosing.  My way of running things would hugely reflect on what I think of myself. For those who haven’t felt this, let me put this into perspective.. it’s like standing naked in front of the world cos sooner or later your true self is revealed. Coupled with this predicament, is the fact that I have to leave my old job… my almost-first-job.

Like the rest of you, I had grown so used to the comfortable lifestyle and the predictable routine, that it was difficult to free myself of it. Thanks to circumstances, I could find the strength and the motivation. I started in my job when we were just 5 people, more than 5 years ago. Today we are 20 in just our office. During this time we have been part of everything in the office, selecting the courier person, the water supplier, the chairs, the machines, to the actual job for which we were being paid, of designing chips. I have interviewed most of my colleagues here. I have spent nights trying to get the network or the systems up. Months trying to get a product delivered!! All in all, I had started to get pretty attached to my company.

There are so many things that are tied to everything that is pseudo-yours, pseudo because you don’t have the right of a single paisa over it, yet it was yours for so many years. I remember the time when we were fighting as to who would get the cubicle farthest from the managers, or who would get the best system to work on, whose turn was it to shout at the telephone company for cutting our lines, who would be the next to take care of the petty cash account, who would go next into the freezing server room to fix the servers. God!! The list is endless. I spent the first 5 years of my professional growth here. Now I am saying good-bye.

Good-byes are nature’s way of saying “move on” or “GROW”, but it is still sad to part ways.  What hurts more than the parting is the apathy of people around you. Unfortunately for me, the very few good friends I had made aren’t around or are extremely busy in the last few days here. Every day becomes a drag, when you know that you have to go to the office to people who wouldn’t really care whether you were there the next day or not. People who wouldn’t care to talk to you, but are ready to start allocating your system, your chair, to someone else before you have even breathed your last in the office. As I said they are not mine, they are pseudo-mine, but the pain is real and its only mine.

I wonder whether this is the same feeling parents would be getting when their kids fight over the estate after the father has died, instead of actually being with him and talking to him. I always thought that I had trained my juniors well...anyways... I cannot even empathize with a father’s pain, but I now know how it must feel. Today I came back heavy-hearted, with a few questions in my mind…Is this all really worth it? Will my life ever have meaning? Will my going away tomorrow affect a few lives? Will someone miss me tomorrow for who I was? More than that did anyone ever know who I was?

We tend to get lost in the big jungle, try to be small cogs of big giant wheels and assume self importance. The truth is lying naked in front of you. You won’t be missed tomorrow when you are gone. The wheel would still be rolling with newer and better cogs. Truth is that we try so hard to fit in that we lose our identity.

The only way to be memorable is to do something memorable. Lets not try to fit in. Live a life worth living, because after 20 years of sacrificing your happiness, family and love, all for your career, you should be able to answer, even if only to your own self, “what the hell did you do for these many years?” Do something you like. When you do something you like, you are bound to make several people happy along the way, because you are happy.

Be different. Be extraordinary. Ordinary is so boring.

Make your mark. Make it count or die trying!!