Corporate Rat Life..

Vedas have propagated different stages of life – all have a meaning and each one of them sets stage for the next stage. Skipping one and jumping to another, is but a natural human tendency. However, I feel that the beauty lies in going through the stages. Helps appreciate what you had, and what you have, so much more.

Ending my corporate career after a decade of being in the rat race. While this does not mean the end of my earning capacity or my retirement by a long shot, it assumes significance in terms of the way life will be going forward. I do firmly believe that one needs to be a part of the rat race. You need to have run the race, fretted it out, frustrated yourself, and triumphed in your little glories. Only once you have done that do you begin to realize that you are tiring out. That the race no longer excites you. That falling in rat traps is coming at a price. That there is no FINAL triumph. Each one of us does reach this stage or will reach this stage, but it is important to have run the race, else it will be difficult to identify the difference between mood swings and life swings.

So, after my decade long of frustrations and triumphs, I feel tired of the rat race. I want to do something more meaningful. Another rat race, one may say, however, this will be far more difficult. This rat race would be for identity, for depth, for meaning and if it comes to it, for existence.  However, the good or bad part of it will be that I will be competing with myself.

I am scared, to say the least. A decade of being in a system makes you scared of exploration. It makes you scared of taking risks and getting out of your comfort zone. If I could call it poetic justice – in the process of “making” a good life, it eats up the ability to “lead” a good life.

With Scare, there is also hope..probably there is only hope. A hope, a belief..that I will surprise myself once again. With this life would come a full circle. I started journey of doing an MBA and then a job, because I was searching for my identity. I got one. I lived it. I lost it. And the search begins all over again…