A Happy Struggle
what makes life more worthy?
Meeting an old friend makes us feel good, isn’t it? And when it is someone with whom we have spent most of time in and out of the classroom during our graduation, it becomes even better and sometimes a bit emotional as well. Last week, I met one such friend of mine. After smiling at each other with lot of happiness inside, we ordered coffee. Before the coffee arrived, we spoke about what we have done with our lives after graduation. The jobs we took, the ideas we worked on, the businesses we did, the nights we had only noodles and the dreams that always remained with us no matter what we have gone through. The coffee arrived. Sipping the strong coffee, we moved onto the much lighter side of life, college days. The girls we tried to impress, cricket we played, classes we bunked and the teachers we tried to flatter for marks. We just replayed our lives and enjoyed talking about it. What a refreshing time meeting an old friend can be?
The coffee is over but we continued to talk,
“Any savings?” I asked.
“Yes, not money but lot of failures and experiences”, he replied with a smile.
“Ahh!! Same with me too, not even a penny saved after seven years of graduation but so many lessons learnt”, I responded.
“Did we choose the wrong path in trying to be entrepreneurs?” he questioned.
I thought for a moment and responded with a question, “Did you ever regret?”
“Sometimes, on those hard days, I did. We worked so hard and yet we are here, the same as we were after college, except for the experience we earned”. He then paused briefly, may be to gulp the emotion that’s trying to come out, and said,
“But then, we did what we are passionate about, we chased our passion. we never thought of what we would get in return, we did it because we were happy doing it”
“But don’t you think we should make money as well?”, I asked.
“That’s a tough one to answer. Should we chase money or chase our passion? Though many choose the comparatively easy one and chase money, few spend their lifetime in pursuit of their passion. Its one’s own choice.”, he replied.
“What do you mean by one’s own choice, Do you mean its alright not to care about what we love to do, our passion?”
“No, everyone in this world is actually a sum of two. The one inside and the one outside. Your inside, that is your inner self, looks for emotional fulfillment. Your outside, that is your physical self , looks for comfort and care. The choice we need to make is, whom do we want to make happy? the inside or the outside? Most of us prefer to be happy on the outside, by convincing our inner self to follow the real world. Few are happy from inside by doing what their inner self wants them to do but struggle on the outside to align with the real world’s expectations. Passion is pursued by these few, the ones who choose to keep their inside happy even if its painful on the outside”
“So, both inside and outside cannot be happy at the same time?”, I asked, like a student.
“No, they can be. if you pursue your passion for long enough, you will master it. After that, the world pays for your mastery. Though passion is pursued for happiness, money is its byproduct. The longer you pursue, the more money you will earn. You will be happy from inside for pursuing your passion and your outside will have money to buy comfort and care. Richest people on this planet belong to this category”
“Then, why doesn’t everyone pursue it?”
“Because, not everyone discovers it and not all passions produce money. The comfort on the outside is so deceptive that they never talk to their inner self and find out what it loves to do. Once they start to earn a little, they succumb to the enjoyment that money brings and find it difficult to accept the struggle that passion brings with it. They disconnect from their inner self, they truly will never live their life completely. They die without ever discovering what they love to do. We loved many things when we were kids, the enthusiasm to do what we loved was incredible then. We were relentless in doing what we want to and do you remember how hard your parents tried to stop you from doing what you want to do? we never cared about what we get, we just enjoyed. Those were the days we valued our inner-self, we reflected our true passion. Sad and strange that we transformed into one who doesn’t even care about knowing what he loves to do.”
“Sir, bill”, said a young man interrupting our conversation. He’s the same one who served us the coffee.
I took it, had a look at it and asked the young man, “Do you work full time here?”
“No sir, I am a student and I do this as a part-time job”.
For some reason, I was curious to know the reason behind his part-time. I asked, “Do you love this job?”
“No sir, I don’t like this job. I love playing guitar, I want to buy a good one, so I am doing this”, he replied with a smile and happiness in his eyes.
“To pursue your passion, you are doing what you don’t like to do?”, I asked.
“Yes sir. After all this, I will have a guitar and I can play it every day”, he replied with his eyes filled with joy.
“Yes. You are not earning money now, you are earning happiness.” I said and continued, “So, you want to be a pop star one day?”
“Doesn’t matter sir, I love playing it, so I will do it”, came the reply instantly.
I looked at my friend, we smiled at each other, then I looked at the young man and said, “Yeah, you are right, it doesn’t matter”. He just smiled and left, but he taught us that
“To earn your happiness, you need to struggle. To do what you love to do, you should be ready to do what you don’t love to do”
I don’t know who you are but because you are reading this, I assume that you still want to connect to your inner-self. For that to happen, discover your passion. Be true to yourself and ask, “What do I love to do? What makes me happy?” Listen to your inner self; you will realize that you have many things that you love to do. Stop thinking and start trying to pursue each of them. One day, you will find your happiness in one of them, and that one is your true passion. Don’t live a life without having something worth living for, don’t live a life that doesn’t reflect your true inner self and don’t live a life that doesn’t do what it loves to do. Discover your passion, after all its inside you since the day you were born
“Passion is the only thing that makes you happy even while you struggle, Go find it and never struggle again.”
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