What is that I am good at ?

Now that I have lived almost 30 years and few months in this beautifully imperfect world I thought its time for a little introspection. The question that is boggling my mind is What is that I am good at? That’s a big question to answer I say. Let’s rewind and see what all I came across,

First Distraction :

My faintest memories of being good at something is when I was a junior school kid. I must be around 6 to 7 yrs old, my I demonstrated excellent control of racquet ( badminton) compared to other kids. Aided, by the amount of play time ( which many of us cannot afford at the age of 30 , you got to take care of your GF’s or Wife / Family mate, earn bread and butter! Yawwnnn.) I was pretty good at this sport by the time I was 10 yrs ( almost about to be into Upper School). What happened to that skill I acquired by lots of hard work and playing hours in the sun/wind/unlit porches? - Dead ( Reason: My High school teacher felt, If I spent more time playing this game I am not gonna make it to college Awesome!! They didn’t bother about the hard work, commitment , love and passion I had for this game. They didn’t bother about the time I spent to acquire the skills. All they cared about is that, by playing badminton you are not going to become a Doctor/Engineer/[Any other professional] { The order of precedence is as mentioned, because that’s how things work in India.

Fine, but now the problem is I have to focus on an entirely new skill set ( which is learning Mundane subjects). This I believe was the first distraction or lose of focus in my life. Can I blame my teacher? Can I blame my parents who listened to her? Or Should I blame the 10 year old me?

I think, I got pretty good survival skills (Thank GOD! Not that religious but just in case you know ).

Second Episode:

Fell into the mundane daily routine of memorizing several subjects to spit it out for exams. Did I bother to learn the meaning of any of it? Did my teachers bother to check whether I understood any of it? Did my parents bother to see , if this change of track from badminton to studies caused troubles ( they worried more about my marks card and the number of ‘A’s in it) ? Or Did any of my silent prayers and tears went into their ears? Again, should I blame a teenager me or the elderly others? Anyways, I got into the habit of learning and over a period of 5 years I did catch up with others and passed out of school with good marks ( yeah good marks, which is the benchmark to get into a famous junior college, but is it really useful? Half of the things we learn we never use, hence other than distracting us with multiple subjects and skills why can’t we just focus on what we are good at?)

Third Stage: In Junior years of college, I again excelled and mastered the art of playing ping-pong ( Table tennis). The in built skills cannot be hidden for long. Again this time villain was my parents no one else. They ensured that I did not play any zonal/state level tournaments, rather focused on solving maths problems so that I will get an engineering admission. Stress level got into me, this studies was not my thing, rather I was superbly good at Racquet sports like Badminton & Table tennis.I was agile with extremely quick reflexes and flexibility. But all that went for a toss, and I ended up being a giant panda towards the end of junior college weighing 104 kg. Now, I knew there is no point dreaming about a career in sports because my family will never support me to realize that dream. I decided to study with whatever energy I had and passed the engineering/Medical entrance tests :) Look at the confusion, parents are so adamant that kid should try both engineering/medical entrance exams so that he/she will get into at least one of it. Again, look at the way a normal human being is put into a confused situation with not so clear goal. This is one of the reason why most of us are not good at anything we do.We do not focus our energy on one particular skill and develop it. We instead focus on 100 different things hoping that at least, we’ll be good at one thing. Our brain is a funny piece of thing, it just cheats you by making you think that you are skillful in various things while being not good at anything in reality.

Fourth Stage:

Now that I have passed the mental dilemma at 17yrs ( Engg Vs Medical) , next confusion was when my parents couldn’t decide what subject I should study. My heart said, I wanted to learn ‘Chemistry’ and become a professor in this subject. Oh yeah, you might ask How come? remember the last 7 years of struggle to become a sportsman and leaving that dream, this is what I came up with when I couldn’t realise the above dream. But, according to parents and relatives as well ( wow atta boy, look at who all are involved in decision making here) I should not study ‘Chemistry’, I should go become a Civil Engineer. This time I was not willing to hear them, I ensured that I took up electronics & communication engineering and decided to make my own road ahead.

Fifth Stage:

After getting trained as a hardware engineer ( mostly high end digital systems) , choosing a career is again a big question mark. I believe your first job mostly determines your career route, unless you forcefully change it later.I choose to become a software engineer at a big corp, worked there for sometime and the lethargic work environment caught up with me and I quit the job in search of finding the reason for my existence. Since then it has been a journey to discover something that I can focus on. I worked as a manager, analyst with small,medium and large firms but did not enjoy any of it.So I never worked longer than a year with any of them. In between, I got my masters degree from a world renowned social studies and think tank institution, which actually helped me to learn to think and clearly voice my opinions without fear to the world. This matters a lot, since we live in a conformist world where you have to confine yourself to the rules & regulations set forth by certain individuals a non-conformist finds himself at odds.But, I don’t care! After a journey of almost 4 years not knowing what is that I seek! and learning new skills and meeting new people, I somewhere in the corner of my heart found a spark in the form of mathematics & programming.

Sixth Stage : The stage of discovery

Here in this stage, at the age of 30 I feel I have found love in something other than badminton. But, the amount of pain, confusion and struggle for almost 20 years to reach this stage was profound. Why do we have to go through these kind of struggles? I don’t know why parents has to make their kids stereotypical Engineer/Doctor? Don’t we need other kinds of people? I think it’s time for everyone to sit up and think ( meaningfully think, are you doing what you love the most??). Because, I am now doing what I love the most! It is the new badminton of my life !

 

What is that I am good at ? The answer is nothing ! I am no perfect person and my skills are very limited. The several distractions and turns has made me focus on multiple skill sets because of which I could never master a particular skill. I hope to master at least one skill(programming) rest of my life, but I am sure I will leave this world with much to learn.