The Crisis of Existence

Have you been in this perpetual crisis of existence, absolutely clueless about who you are and what you want to be while realizing that the world around is a myth, a homogenous force conspiring each moment to slow you down? Do you aspire to be a fashion blogger in the morning but want to be a calligrapher by the evening while actually doing something presently that you consider is absolutely less or unchallenging? Have you been wanting to rebel so as to take a reverse or an alternate walk through the trajectory of progress set by the world but are absolutely weak and fragile to do it?  Are you in return being shown ruthlessly down by the people around you that sometimes out of concern and sometimes otherwise put you in a sense of self-doubt? I am sure many of you are.

Who knows more than you of the friction generated in the process of uprooting yourself from the last year of your high school where you presently are and planting yourself somewhere in the world that you aspire for! 

You know the frustration of compulsorily learning how to climb a tree for years at length while you actually want to swim, or maybe fly. You know how much pain it is to prove yourself each day to the very people who claim to care for you without any hashtags attached. You know how much monotonous it is to hear the overused set of advice systematically thrown out at you each time a relative visits you, or you visit them. You know how difficult it is to convince the world around that you want to be a blogger and not a professor. That you want to be a singer and not a bureaucrat. It is strange how people do not connect to your stream of thoughts and appear to be absolutely insensitive.

This at times makes skipping family functions and gatherings inevitable and at many times confines you to your room and to yourself for days at length. While you project to the people outside that you are immersed in your textbook for the upcoming test, you actually are far from studying. While the people outside your room’s door accept it with some reservations that you might be studying, you actually are glued to your smartphone, browsing through the stories of people around the world living your dreams. 

Parents do not listen, siblings do not understand and you count your days in utter self-doubt and contempt. This is very much common and you are not an exception trust me. What you need at those hours is not self-contempt but contemplation. You need to be strong and think over questions that you fail to ask because you are almost disoriented.

I of all things, appreciate your thoughts but having said that I must bring to you some problematizations and intellectual tickling. I appreciate your dreams and ideas. It is absolutely normal to have a crisis of existence and uncertainty of career goals. It is very much appreciable to swim against the tide. But again, an essential point that needs to be sorted here is the end result of living your dream.

Say you turn out to be lucky enough to live your dream and that your parents and siblings allow you happily to skip all your classes and let you go out YouTubing. How far and for how long can you then sustain your dream? To what extent are you then sure that you won’t want to be a doctor after two years from now? Do you wish to earn money out of your dream and take it up as your profession? Or do you love it so much that despite being a software engineer some five years from now you would still want to do it as your passion?

It is important to think when you say you want to be a painter. Do you want to be only a painter and nothing else? Or do you want to be a Bank Probationary Officer and start up a painting school on weekends? When you say you want to be a YouTuber, do you want to be only a YouTuber? Or do you want to excel in what you are presently doing and earn so lavish that you can afford all modern-day gadgets to make the best videos? 

If you decide to join a bank or excel in whatever you are doing now and wait for being capable enough to take up to living your dreams are you sure that you would still, be passionate enough about YouTubing or painting five years from now? These are a set of complex yet pertinent questions that you tend to skip or overlook in your excitement and rebellious over-indulgence with your dreams.

By the time I bring up the next chapter to you, feel free to send in your thoughts to me at uddiranbx@gmail.com

Send in your frustrations and troubled reckonings and I shall engage with it to make the upcoming chapters even more relevant. Because, of all things, something that you need most is someone who would listen, I insist you speak.