“A Desperate Dream” — How I would like my biography to read like

Since it does not seem very likely that anyone will ever write my biography, judging by the heading my life has taken, I decided to take it upon myself to do the arduous task of writing it, so that I may look upon it during times of utter despair and feel even more soul-crushing despair for a life that can never be.

I present to you, the life that could’ve been, had I been cleverer, handsomer and plain simple willing-to-get-my-ass-off-the-couch type of person.

He would be pleasantly surprised to be proven wrong. He is bored of being the only one to come up with the solutions. But so far, that happy, unlikely event has not yet come to pass. The wordsmith has never missed the target. Being handy with code and the know-how of computers he reigns supreme, ruling over all with his technological might. An accomplished wordsmith, he has already clinched several literary prizes under his belt. Perhaps his only crippling Achilles’ heel is his inability to be modest. Overflowing with self-worth, he gets mistaken for a narcissist. He knows the business world like the back of his hand; he plays the stock market like a lyre, making the sweet sound of tinkling coins. With a mansion the size of the city state of Vatican, the esteemed whiz kid, never seems to be perturbed with the rising costs of real estate. Leading a life that would leave even the monarchs of old drooling at the mouths, he is unconcerned with mundane issues of expenses. Yet only one thing remains for him to conquer — death. He faces the eternal quandary of mankind armed with a platoon of scientists at his command. What chance does death have in the presence of his virtuosity!

His journey had humble origins. He was told he couldn’t do it, that many had tried before him, failed, and had lost everything they held dear. He was told that he was wasting his time; surely no one could best the giants! Who was he to think that he would succeed, where so many others before him had failed. He was just a small town nobody, daring to dream big.

But isn’t that how all legends are born?

Why would he of all people let criticism deter him? He was the greatest of them all! A God among humans! Obviously they were scared. Fear of the unknown is understandable. The unknown in his case, was his vast repertoire of skills and capabilities. He was alone. He would receive no help from others. Of that he was certain. He had to learn to take their harsh criticisms in his stride and let nothing dissuade him from his goal. That was the first thing he had to master. People would always be critical, to the point of brutality, of new ground-breaking ideas. He would be ridiculed, his idea made fun of. No one, not even his family, had expressed a confidence in his revolutionary idea. They dismissed it off as too exotic. 
The ones who have the confidence to move on despite the lack of support will have forever earned a place in the annals of mankind.

Ignoring the others and their negatives, he battled on. They were just afraid; afraid that he would actually succeed, where they had failed. People were never willing to accept that there was somebody else out there who was better than them. They lie to themselves saying that, they too could do it if they tried or that they were simply not interested. It is the mark of a truly great man who is willing to accept his limitations.

For years and years he toiled, making his own luck, working under unimaginative bosses till he clinched a job that wielded some real power. He learnt all the tricks of the trade. He worked day and night to build his credibility, until finally people were willing to go with any idea that popped in his head.
He was finally poised to make a drastic change in how people connect online. The internet was still in its infancy, rapidly growing, but still had not reached its maturity yet. He planned to change it all. He would bring to the internet what the Industrial Revolution had brought to Europe. Furiously plugging away on his project at night while working his dead-end corporate job in the day, he neared completion. It was only a couple of months more until he would release his product and start promoting it to mainly the younger generation. He knew the future always lay with the young ones, the ones in the colleges and schools. They were the most open to new technology.

A decade had passed. His revolutionary new product is now enjoying the same popularity as Google, Facebook and Twitter once did. His company now controls almost the entire internet space, with him being the majority shareholder. All the giants of yore, unable to compete with him, slowly lost users and faded into obscurity.

He was the one! The savior of the internet!
No more tyranny! No more control! No more selling people’s privacy for profits! He championed people’s rights and fought for the less heard voices. He essentially handed over a screw-you card to the government and their assorted intelligence agencies. People hailed him as an internet messiah! Even the notoriously elusive hacktivist collective, Anonymous acknowledged his product to be democracy in action. No more autonomous companies obsessed with only profits and balance sheets. His was a people’s company. And they loved him for that.

So what does a man with seemingly endless amounts of time and money do? Why he gives it all back to society, of course! When he was not jet setting around the world, he would be among the protesters fighting for the amnesty of Snowden, or would be helping with the humanitarian efforts in Syria. Each day was different for him. He followed no schedule, needed no assistant to book hotels for him. He would live like the people. But he did have his small comforts. He would fly his private jet.

He would be among the Greenpeace activists aboard the ship Rainbow, blocking the Japanese whaling fleets in the morning, then in the evening he would be off to Egypt in his private jet, protesting against President Morsi. He was always involved with one humanitarian effort or another.

Now after almost 30 years of trying to make the world a better place, he has finally retired. He leads a comfortable existence, acting on all of his whims. Money was of no concern. He had enough of it. He leads a nomadic existence, never living in any single place for more than a year. He is determined to explore every figurative corner of the world, outside of the earth too, if he could help it. His conglomerate had invested in a space tourism company that promised to set up hotels on both the Moon and Mars. He believed in the principle of living life to the fullest, not wasting a precious minute. The Gods saw fit to bless him with fame and fortune. Why waste it?

Or was it really the Gods blessing him? Or did he make his own luck? Well we’ll never know. The only thing we do know is what he said to a journalist once, when asked whether he believed in luck — “I would rather be lucky than good.”
This cryptic statement has left journalists, bloggers and talk show hosts puzzled for years. It has been the source of intense debate on social media platforms. What exactly did he mean by it? Did he not believe in goodness? Did he not believe in hard work? Many of his fellow luminaries dismissed luck off as an excuse used by people disgruntled with life. What did he mean?! When asked about it by pesky journalists, the only response from the great one would be a smile that rivaled even the legendarily enigmatic one by Mona Lisa. Was he also hiding a secret? Alas we will never come to know.