Idea of a good life!

Every morning we at office have this habit of going for a tea just outside our office premises which is complemented by our usual office chit chat, gossiping and a dose of career centric cribbing. But yesterday I was taken aback, when during our tea outing one of my colleague asked me – ‘ So what is your idea of a good life?’ Taken aback, not just because I had to actually think through before answering but also because we hardly get into such off the track and rather philosophical discussions in officeJ.

Nevertheless, after a momentary thoughtful pause I replied back saying that ‘for me an idea of a good life would be to make a living out of something about which I am really passionate about, something that I really enjoy doing’. With a wry smile on his face, pat came my friend’s counter question, ‘So are you passionate and in love with your job here’. This time around I replied back without any thoughtful pause, ‘Of course not, with no acknowledgement or appreciation for the slogging we do here, there is hardly any motivation to actually enjoy the work’. But even before I could finish answering, my friend pounced on me asking  - So if you get your dues in terms of timely acknowledgement and appreciations for your hard work will you start enjoying your work here and get passionate about it? I replied back saying ‘may be not passionate about it but for sure I won’t be cribbing about it as much then’. This discussion ended in sometime but without a conclusive or a convincing  answer to ‘what is your idea of a good life?’.

But somehow that question got stuck in my mind, to an extent that I started to delve on it even further. So what is that I enjoy doing in life? Most certainly writing, travelling and sports would top the chart for me. So can I make a living out of it now? Some might say I am too old to start in any of these trades professionally nowJ. And to leave a reasonably settled (albeit boring) career in IT with an added responsibility of a lovely family and not to forget two fat loans to be repaid, makes it seem all  the more unviable. Unless, I opt for the treacherous path of starting from the scratch, but that again would be a big gamble and beyond practical means.

What does one do then to overcome the routine discontentment and boredom? Understandably, to make a living out of something you love doing would need a focussed effort towards it and to start that in parallel with your current job isn’t all that easy. But if we leave aside the monetary aspect and can just rekindle our love with those activities that we enjoyed pursuing earlier in our lives, it will still make us feel rejuvenated amidst most boring of routines. For instance, a session of cricket with friends on the weekends does wonder to freshen up and relive those good old childhood days. A vacation or two every year not only gives us a golden chance to explore the world around us but also keeps us in high spirits throughout the year. Spending some time off to read an interesting book reminds us on what we have been missing for all these days and forces us to rekindle this beautiful habit of reading. Though this list of priceless nothings may vary from an individual to other but the list is endless.

So the idea of having a good life starts from our own identification of things that we love to do in life. And then to spare some time off for these things from our otherwise boring and monotonous routine. But often we fail to identify what is that we love to do in life and even if we have the realization we fail to indulge in those activities. Ironically, there are very few who actually make a living out of something they love to do in life and even fewer actually indulge in something they love doing in their lives. But the idea of a happy life is not about doing something extraordinary or out of the box, it’s just about reinventing ourselves and pursuing something that we have loved doing all our life.

Life is after all  not as hard as we perceive it to be but is rather what we make out of it!

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