Living by Expectations

I hope you have not hated my normal Daily routine @ Infosys. Many of you might have scanned the contents of it. a few might have one through the blog completely (Assuming bench strength in Infosys is ever increasing. thank you for the troubles you have gone through).
Today, while having lunch (Jain Thali) with my friends, an old story struck my thoughts, and my main memory processor was flooded with the good old memories to the extent that due to collisions and internal jamming, huge data latency was found. Suddenly my mind became the fastest navigator known to the humankind, and in a zillionth second, swept to Linkin Park's Song Numb to many yearned down the memory galore to the present- or the yet uncertain future. Wao.. That was way too much to ask for. Let me reiterate a few lines from Linkin Park's Numb-
"
I'm Tired of being what you want me to be
Feeling so faithless, lost under the surface
I don’t know what you're expecting of me
Put under the pressure of walking in your shoes...
Every step that I take is another mistake to you
................
But I know, you were just like me with someone disappointed n you
"

Let us take my own example:-
3 years: - I wanted to be a grown up person with lot of chocolates and toys.
5 years: - I wanted to be a Pilot.
7 years: - I wanted to be a policeman.
10 years: - I wanted to score more marks than person X.
11 years: - I wanted to play better (?) than person Y.
15 years: - I wanted to be smarter than peer group.
16-24 years: - I wanted to just do what is expected of me.
Or shall I say, I was made to do what was expected of me. Yes, that would be better; I don’t remember last time when I took any decision for my own good. With each and every person expecting that I have to (well dude you better fall in line or get the hell out) to what I am expected to. It was always like walking on very thin edge where you have to bring about necessary changes in yourself (adapt yourself) to align with circumstances.

We all had dreamt BIG. I don't think that many of us were sure from very kinder age about joining an IT industry and becoming engineers. I think many of us had lead a life that was rather a manifestation of what was expected of us rather than what we actually are. We do give a chuckle when someone cracks a joke, even if we want to laugh our hearts out, but we are more cautious about what others would think if we do. We would act like the most decent gentlemen in front of girls.
There are many who might have dreamt of trekking in marshy woodlands, going to a safari, spending a night n the middle of nowhere in a dark tent and cooking meals in open fire, playing stupid games with our little kins, intentionally getting defeated in a game from dose little devils and make them feel ecstatic, sitting in a bench facing to the sea, and watching the sunset, with only waves disturbing the silence, of sleeping in the open roof of the village house and counting the saptrishi and Orion, catching glimpse of a "falling star" and making stupid wishes, of making ourselves heard, of lending out a helping hand. We all might have one of these or some other creative dreams that inspired us, that instilled in us the purpose of life.
Well, where is the devil. We can't have all our dreams and aspirations come true.NOM but I don’t think that there is anyone among us who really can say that he/she has lead his/her life out of his own expectations, never been forced into doing anything he/she dint want to.
What can be the purpose of writing this boring blog. Well, frankly, it is just to share what triggered me to think about leading life which is too overburdened by others' expectations that I sometime, I doubt about existence and ownership of my own life. Dasvedania, Rock On, TZP, and numerous other movies have catered to this particular school of thought, but for me, it needed self-realization to wake me up. And being awakened by the silly accident really had awoken me. Let me tell in short about the incident - I went to buy a few vegetables, yuck, NOT me again :(, anyways, I found there a girl of class 7th (damn what was I perceiving her to be, as I out of shear lack of knowledge of proud instilled in me, asked her in which "kaksha"- hindi synonym for “class” you are in, and pat came the reply, I am class SEvEn-in English) selling vegetables and assisting her mother with calculations of the vegetables' prices. In her little right hand, which was also acting as her record book, and on Reynolds pen in her left hand, she was a math geek. I saw in her face the future that is in store for the gen NEXT. I just requested her mother- Please don’t kill her expectations, Please let her decide on her course of life. She was quite taken back by what emotional outburst I had had. Suddenly conscious of present, I haphazardly put the vegetables, and remembered to drop by some 20 bucks (I hadn’t had much of cash with me :P) to her saying, you have to keep on studying and making your dreams come true.

While returning back to my home, only one thought keep on disturbing me- Why? Why had I deleted the Rs 200/- donation to buy school books for poor mail rather most promptly without even having a proper look at it. Is this who I really have become? Those 20 bucks gave me the most satisfaction, as I somehow know, that those 20 bucks were not spent on feeding a poor, but on making future of India, a bit more enlightened. I know what my expectation of mine is. I know what I want from life and what I could give to life to live the life the way Life should be. Now I realize the only way to live life is when it is not predetermined to fall with someone's expectations, but rather when we are the masters of our own fate. So let’s expect more out of life, as it is too short to be wasted and too long to live.