A couple of days ago I was having this discussion with my friends. After a hard day's work(especially on days when you've been rubbed the wronged way in most of your interactions with other humans), these discussions tend to border on both the insanely idealistic and the depressingly cynical. And the 'tone' of the discussion usually fluctuates randomly from one side of the aforesaid thin line to the other. So, anyway, this discussion was about what we should do with our lives. As young kids straight out of college we still have some dreaminess left in us - the part that wasn't drowned out in the drab practicality of the so-called 'real' world. So you see, we're still in it to make a difference. How we're going to get anywhere close to achieving that, I have no idea. And it's probably because we felt that maintaining the status quo won't get us anywhere close to being able to make a difference, that we had this discussion in the first place.
So how does one make a difference? And to dissect this godforsaken question even further, who or what do you intend to make a difference to in the first place? To society? To your sense of duty towards yourself? I don't really know the answer to this question or any others which we may have posed to each other and to ourselves during the course of that discussion. But what I do know is that the discussion kept going back to a well-known speech by a certain Mr Steve Jobs. That impassioned speech by Mr Jobs to the graduating class at Stanford exhorted his audience to 'find what you truly love'. I guess that's what it boils down to at the end of the day. If you're trying to make a difference, you're going to find it really difficult unless you love making a difference with whatever it is you're doing.
The nature of these discussions never allows one to draw a definite conclusion about the conclusions from the discussion. You just feel better because you had the discussion. That's a great reward, per se. So it was with this one too. We never reached a consensus on what it is we should do to make a difference, but we did remind ourselves to continue to keep looking for such pursuits.
6 comments:
Tell ur friends that they must join
Bharatiya Rashtravadi Samanata Party - www.brsp.org
it's unusual that you post this entry AFTER leaving college coz i remember having innumerable discussions like this while we were in college. this post is probably a few years late in the posting, don't u think?
Maybe it is. Maybe these thoughts should have come to me earlier than they have. But the important thing for me is that they did come at all. You know what they say.. It's never too late..
of course, of course.
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