I’ve had a couple of really rough days, and at times like these, all I can do is ponder “what went wrong?” or “what could I have done better?” or “is this all that there is to life?”.

If it were that simple to answer these questions, there wouldn’t have been a gazillion self-help books out there in the market, most of which are total crap (forgive my french!). Despite this, there are quite a few people who seem to have figured it all out (including people who write crappy self-help books and make it to Oprah’s book club, ergo the ‘stairway to success’). I believe that the one thing that defines this clique of individuals is the fact that they chase their dreams and turn them into reality, in spite of all the hardships that they have to face or the obstacles that they have to overcome. They jump, run, hide and seek, and never feel the need to justify their actions to anyone, no matter how ridiculous they might seem!

Is that what’s wrong with all of us? Are we chasing the right dream? Moreover, are we dreaming the right dream? The problem here seems not with the people, but with the mindset that is etched into our very essence from the day we are born. Most individuals trod down the paths dictated either by the sociological trends (“he’s a caveman and hunts for meals – that sounds so groovy!  I want to do just that”) or by their genealogy (“my dad and I went to Harvard and so did my grand-father – you should be no exception!”). These impositions may seem pretty attractive at some point, but they will not take you a long way unless you yourself are passionate about them.

In a third-world society, creativity (e.g. the fine arts) seems to be of little or no interest as a person may or may not be able to make a living out of it. We earn our degrees (more often than not in Business Administration, Computer Science, Accountancy or Telecommunications as they are all the rage these days), and no sooner have we graduated, we start chasing after prospective employers like a tiger chasing a gazelle. Only a few brave souls venture out into the rather obscure branches of art and science to find their true calling – some might think that we stick to a ‘safe choice’ rather than taking a risk and having faith in our innate abilities. At the end of the day, do we really want to sit in a cubicle from 9 to 5, wasting away our lives, or try doing something that may not give us a lot of financial stability but would definitely give us peace of mind? Just take a moment here and answer this question for me. Am I doing what I was meant to do? Am I extremely happy doing what I do? Do I walk into and leave my work-place smiling, knowing that I accomplished something today?

Although I’m extremely satisfied with whatever I have done so far, the only thing that I truly care about these days is my writing, which, as some of you might have noticed, I’ve been doing a lot of lately. Over the next few weeks, I will post some old as well as new material on my blog so be to check it out. Besides writing prose, I also enjoy writing poetry – haven’t written any new ones except for a marketing jingle and some slogans for a multinational FMCG (still don’t know if they liked them or not), but I’m going to change that soon. God knows I’m not suffering from a writer’s block as I have a plethora of thoughts swimming in my head. The written word has a longer lifespan than you and I, so why not leave a lasting imprint (even if it’s a digital one) on this world before we cross over to the other side?

Aspire to live your own life instead of living somebody else’s.