We can either be inspired, or be despaired, by life around us. In the days I grew up in Shimla, the majority had a middle-class, or a lower middle-class existence. I am sure that growing-up experience is true for most of you as well. Wealth was only sensed, never openly seen. So it was not too difficult to follow the Gandhian life. Indeed, there was little option.
Life is different these days everywhere. A new ostentatious attitude has taken over. It is now chic to flaunt your money, chase brands and live a hedonistic lifestyle. Even for the middle classes, the slew of gadgets generates pressure on them to get acquisitive. So we are continually assaulted by sights of great wealth, which creates a feeling of want, envy and inadequacy in many of us and it pushes us to emulate the ‘success’ we see all around.
That is how we get despaired by what we see. That is how we get pushed into adopting an attitude and emulating the ‘successful’ lifestyle of another person and also becoming someone else. And therein lies the seeds of much sadness in our lives.
It is imperative to understand ourselves and our limitations before we can assault the mountain of real success. It is in not understanding ourselves that we create a lot of chaos and unhappiness in us. If I believe that I ought to be a fashion designer to move with the swish set, but if I do not have any sense of colour, then I am only nurturing the seeds of unhappiness. If I aspire to be a film director to be in the glamour mags, but if I do not have a sense of a story, then I should realise it is pack-up time for me. Even in less glamorous occupations, like being a culinary expert, if you cannot stand the heat in the kitchen you do not have much of a future there.
The point is that the sooner we realise our limitations by holding a mirror to ourselves, the better it is for us. It is because we do not recognise ourselves, or fail to assess ourselves accurately, that the unhappiness blossoms in many of our lives.
I have come across scores of people who are still discovering themselves in their 40s; these are sad tales as it is ideally a time when they should have been peaking in their careers. They would have dabbled in many careers, without any major success. This column is not to say that you should not push yourself to your limit. It is only to say that you should not chase another person’s dream or success story. There are hundreds of engineers who have quit building machines and are making films, just as there are many doctors who are turning entrepreneurs. The point is to discover yourself and follow your heart — in time. So do not get despaired, but be inspired by life. And look within yourself for that spark of inspiration, do not borrow it.
The writer is a renowned film and theatre actor