INFLUENCE

 One day as I was loitering around the verandah, I saw a kid pass by, just looking at the broken chain of her bicycle. She looked intently at the broken ends , few minutes later, sighed as though she had given up. I called her, offered some help. She smiled and approached. At a time when teenagers at the mere sight of adults flee from our sights, I was kind of taken aback.

She started, " Are you a doctor?".I said yes. I asked her, "How old are you?". She was seventeen, had finished her matriculation and lived nearby. 

"You know, even I want to be a doctor! " She quipped. I asked why. She said ," I have always dreamt about being one, my parents too want the same, I just love to be one , you know".

Her answer started me on a little different set of questions. Was the answer her own? What made her dream about it, given she knew how hard a doctor's life would be? How come the end result of someone like her would be me? When we decide on something, are we really making a choice or Is it all a cover?

Carl Jung once said , " The world is full of people suffering from the effects of their own unlived lives. They become bitter, critical or rigid, not because the world is cruel to them, but because they have betrayed their own inner possibilities. The artist who never makes art becomes cynical about those who do. The lover who never risks loving mocks romance. The thinker who never commits to a philosophy sneers at the belief itself. And yet, all of them suffer , because deep down they know , the life they mock is the life they were meant to live". 

The decision to become a doctor rooted from the past experiences.But why a doctor? Why an Engineer or a Businessman? Some of us felt undervalued, felt we deserved respect, needed to prove our value to the people we loved.The habit of getting the desire under cover of an ultimate goal with a rather exterior motive , converting our wants to needs, humans are good at it. But no matter what I maintain that it is all influenced. 

Every situation you face becomes an experience, every hardship becomes a lesson, progresses on the road of influence and eventually flourishes into what you become. 

When people say, " You have changed",  Was that not the whole point? Life hates stagnancy , life loves dynamism to attain stability. So then what is fate?? If you felt disrespected today , the process of influence begins and the end result is called 'fate'. Is influencing the quality of nature? NO. The society, the culture, the upbringing, the choices, the people, they all influence. While nature pushes for reinvention, the society pushes you into a pre-determined projectile. 

Oscar Wilde once said, " If you know exactly what to be in life, you will become it, that is your punishment. Actually not knowing what you want to be , reinventing yourself every morning, not being a noun but being a verb, being moving in life, not being fixed in life is a privilege ". 

How deep is it? The influences create individuals who meet their goals, while those who trespassed , go beyond, loose the influences,  start towards greatness. What is Beyond? Beyond is a journey , a journey towards your inner self. It is where the very open conversation about 'What you really want to be' happens. It is a dialogue within . Hope we all find it and talk it.