खुद की खोज
लोग क्या सोचेंगे सोच मैंने कुछ शब्द मिटा दिए
फिर बचे हुए कागज़ पर मेरा निशान ही न मिला
It’s 10:15 and I jolt awake from my last alarm, reaching for my phone under the pillow. I hadn’t had the energy to put it on the table, having drowned myself in Substack articles until 3 AM. I had set an alarm for 8 deluding myself that staying up late today wouldn’t impact my tomorrow.
The day begins with meetings, Slack, coding, and ends with more meetings late at night. Sitting on my bed, I try to recall my day, but I can’t picture it vividly. I only see my day in third person, as if the memory is already distanced from me. I can’t remember how I felt—only that I completed tasks mechanically.
Ironically, the antidote to a screen-filled day is looking at screen again but this time, with the Chrome tab opened, I am free to type anything. It’s the first semblance of freedom and I hold on to it. I scroll through LinkedIn or Twitter and read more articles on Substack (and wonder how well these amateur writers articulate). Or I scroll through Whatsapps, texting or calling someone till it’s late again. The day repeats.
Weekends aren’t much different. Laundry, ordering food, going to the gym, and finishing pending tasks take up the hours. Sometimes, I attend networking events out of obligation.
If I don’t exist in my day, do I exist in my life?
When I look back at my younger years, I can’t find myself either.
In college, I took the same courses my friends took, applied to the same companies they sat for, and played the same sports they played. The measure of a good decision was how much others wanted it, not how it made me feel. The rarer the opportunity, the more I convinced myself I wanted it too.
At 23, while job-hunting, I was hit by the realization that I’d never made a significant decision on my own. From then on, I devoured self-help content. I became an advice-junkie, reading everything on how to live a life, how to minimize regrets, how to maximize your career. Desperate, I was searching for someone to tell me what to do for I found myself utterly incapable of leading my own life, and that I will mess it up if I live it myself.
The material aspects of my life changed, but the pattern stayed the same. Back then, it was classes and friends dictating my time; now, it’s clients and house chores. I see this problem isn’t unique to me, though not everyone seems afflicted or pained by it as much as I do. How many people are silently resentful that they never chose their own lives? Parents, friends, teachers—someone else charted the path for them.
In India, indirect social pressure is overwhelming. All households seem to have the same worries, the same worldview, the same struggles. Nothing feels unique. People are more concerned with relating to others than pursuing their own paths.
Technology sometimes highlights just how much of life runs on autopilot. Everyone hums the same reel songs, laughs at the same memes. Social media has become an echo chamber of radical ideas about success, relationships, and appearances. A place where the 1% narratives dominates 90% of the conversation.
Are we outsourcing our thinking and, in the process, losing our individuality? Are we converging toward conformity?
The researchers discovered a simple statistical explanation for this “paradox of unanimity:” since everyone is different, the probability of every single person happening to agree on one belief is tiny unless some irrational force, such as laziness or social pressure, is making them agree. In other words, the more people agree, the less likely they are thinking for themselves.
Breaking out of this takes immense effort. Even those who do often feel the pull of conformity. In a world pulling you in a hundred directions, living your own life requires extraordinary resistance.
Have you seen the movie The Map of Tiny Perfect Things? The protagonist guy relives the same day repeatedly and can predict everything -- except for one girl. She’s the only one with free will.
It’s inspiring to witness people take control of their lives and apply their own agency.
Once, I attended a theater play where an actor forgot a line and said something else. Yet, the play continued as scripted. If the next line was already decided, what did it matter what he said? Sometimes, I feel like that actor. My life feels prewritten, and I’m merely unrolling the script. Is the future fixed? Can I change it, or just follow it?
Oscar Wilde once said:
If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life but what I will call the artistic life, if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward.
Quoting from an article on substack - Stoicism is for people who can't change their lot and must learn to live with the pain. Aurelius couldn't quit being an emperor, and Epictetus couldn't quit being a slave
These are some thoughts I’ve been reflecting on lately. This year, I hope to feel more in control of my life. To question what I’ve truly chosen and what has been chosen for me.