Chasing Finish Lines
Growing up in India, it was very common for our parents to encourage us to achieve in life through a principle of parenting that’s almost tradition. It’s tradition because it’s been long established — it’s been passed down from one generation to another (at least in my case).
Principle is to set goals in life for a particular point in time and keep chasing them, one after the other. Here’s how it goes:
When you’re 15–16, you’re told,
“Ace your class 10 exams and there’s no stopping you. You can pick a major of your choice and create the life you want on your own terms. Just ace the board examination.”
Results are announced. The time has come. The world is about to become your playground for you would’ve conquered it. With your tenth-grade scores. As soon as you’re about to wear your crown and sit on your throne, you hear the shrieking voice of your parents go,
“This is just the tenth grade. This doesn’t matter as much as the twelfth grade does. That’s where the real challenges lies. If you ace your 12th grade, you are seriously unstoppable. You will get into the college of your choice, have a successful career and never look back.”
You accept the challenge. You’ve passed the first stage, now you’re onto the next. You study and you study, dreaming of that day when you’ll get your results back and you would’ve made it then. You would have nothing left to struggle for. You would have attained the highest level of achievement possible and then, all of life will automatically fall into place.
2 years later, results are announced. You have been waiting with abated breath for this day of liberation. This is the finish line. This is where life begins to get good. As soon as you’re about to embrace your destiny, you hear the muffled voice of your parents go,
“You’re 4% away from a full 100% but that’s okay. We can round up the best of four of your subjects and hopefully get a good college. Life just begins now. College is the real deal. You’ll be surrounded by some of the smartest people from across the country, you’ve really got to be up for the competition to make a good life for yourself. Once you graduate, you’ll be sitting for the best placements this nation has to offer and you’ll never have to look back again.”
Dismayed, you convince yourself that this infact is your next challenge. To ace college life. To achieve even more. THEN, you will have finally crossed the finish line. THEN, you will be ready for the worldly success.
You study even harder in college. All that work put in, just to see that glorious transcript one day. The semesters fly by as you await your results for each.
You graduate and now you have a job. You’re finally ready to claim your rightful throne. This is the finish line they talked about. This is the sweet taste of success. As you get your first pay cheque and the second and the third, nothing has changed. You crossed the finish line, but nothing has changed and suddenly you hear your parents go,
“Now that you’ve got a job, you should look for somebody to marry. Only when you’re married will you have truly settled into life. True settlement will come with a partner, without a partner, you will only drudge through life.”
So now you’re on a hunt for a partner. Whether you fall in love or you don’t, your parents will find someone for you to marry. Love doesn’t seem like a possibility in the vagaries of your hectic work life so you hand of this decision to your parents. Your parents make a list of all the conditions they believe will make a great partner.
- Status
- Real Estate
- Financial Background
- Well educated
- Respect for traditions
- Fair & Tall
And it goes on & on. You shortlist a few people and eventually, you’re betrothed to somebody that fulfills the criteria the best.
Now you’re married. To somebody you might or might not know well. It looked like you were levelling up again with marriage, but it’s gotten too real. You find yourself sharing the same room. The same bed. Breathe the same air. You awkwardly tiptoe around this person you’ve learned to call your husband/wife, trying to find common grounds. You sometimes do and sometimes don’t. However, you don’t look into it much because marriages are tradition. This is how it’s always been. Maybe, there is something more to this. Another level that you’re yet to get to?
As these thoughts start circling your mind, your parents casually suggest,
“Why don’t you plan a baby? Afterall, it’s only when you have a baby that you can truly become a family. That’s when you are well & truly settled.”
You’ve heard all of this before.
It really hits you.
You’ve heard it ALL BEFORE.
You will never be truly settled. You will never arrive at the finish line. It will keep getting farther & farther, like trying to grasp an elusive idea. There was never a point in life where you’d arrive, and things would magically fall into place. Everything you’ve chased in life had not been a chase in the first place. You realize it was always about the journey. There was never a point to arrive at because life has no points. You’re just flowing through the day, then the next, then the next and the only thing that remains is your experience. The profoundness of your experience. You never did it for the experience though, you always had something you were told to chase and now you can’t stop the chase. Now you find yourself chasing one point after another but never truly arriving.
So here’s to all my friends & family reading this, especially from India,
Everything we were told was never true. There was no finish line. Death is the only finish line. There was only the experience, that continues to stay with us. The only constant. You didn’t arrive, I didn’t arrive. So as we question the principles that have become an inherent part of our society, let’s remember the stronghold a society can have on people including our parents, who just want to belong.
“If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o’-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and ourselves, vanish into the abyss of death” — Alan Watts
