The writing below is the original version. It must consists of many mistakes and inefficiencies, but this best represents the person I was in 2014, so it will stay here as is, as a reminder for myself - 4th May 2019
What are people in the ages of 20-26 doing?
The question really started here. The question of quora which made me think about this too. I turned 24 on Sep 9th. Here is what I am doing these days:
1. Dreaming more — Dreams getting bigger, big enough to make me feel small, make me anxious about tomorrow, making me realise the importance of dreaming. Makes me realise the importance of today, living right now.If it was easy to dream and live it, everyone would have done it. I don’t want to be everyone.
2. Living the dreams — Doing what I love doing, at work, after work, every single evening. Building gadgets, creating experiences, singing, clicking pictures, writing, building future for myself, the one I want to live in.
3. Breaking biases, one at a time, about people, about religions, about actions about reactions, about judgement, about my own self. I am trying to understand people more, people are complicated, but so is Maggie, isn’t it? :)
4. Earning enough and spending everything.
5. Travelling a lot , luxuriously, thanks to the company I work at. I am also grateful to so many people for giving me a chance to travel. My travels are sponsored a lot of times :)
6. Meeting new people, everyday, gaining new perspectives about love, about life, about happiness ,about relationships, about dogs, about despair, about travel, about startups, about technology, about everything. This teaches me the importance of being kind. Everyone in this world is going through something or the other. Being kind is the least you can do to show some respect.
7. Keeping relationships — I know the people I want to see the second before I die and I am sticking with them, for the rest of my life.
8. Bonding with people — over ideas, over masala chai(tea) sometimes, over lemon tea other times, over python program hacks, over french toasts others, in a shared cab sometimes and sometimes, just by letting them know how they inspire me.
9. Creating technologies — Doing projects I want to do, every day, APIs, hardware, IOT, interaction, everything.
10. Enabling people — Helping them dream better, helping them build on their dreams, helping them create businesses, optimise them, helping them ask the Whys about everything. Read more about this here.
11. Feeling empty and full at the same time.
12. Investing in Mutual Funds. Thanks to this one guy who is my best friend from childhood. This is my month 0 for a 12 month scheme.
13. Understanding how this(life) works — realising, it is actually as easy as you want it to be. Don’t believe me? I have stories, real ones to prove my point. Talk more to know more :)
14. Becoming more honest — I have made more friends, people I can count on and people who accept me because I am honest. When I miss someone, I say the same thing. If I fart in the meeting, I accept it, if I don’t like something, I tell them right away and if I don’t like people, I move away.
15. Being vulnerable — It helps me to help people know the weakest parts of me. My insecurities, my ugliness, my baldness, my paunch, my approach to problems. It helps me be me, never thinking twice about what I said, what I did. Lesser regrets, better life. I fall in love everyday, with people, with ideas, with dogs , with actions. Try doing that, it will make you feel much better. I have found out that the capability of being able to love is more powerful than the ability of being loved. Read more about this here.
16. Making decisions, sticking to them, becoming more responsible. My other best friend taught me how to do this. God bless her! May she become a multi billionaire before she is 30 and travels the world with her best friend and the dogs:)
17. Learning how to live alone — One of my many mentors told me, you need to know how to live with your own self before you even think of being with someone else. So I am doing that. There are good and bad times. I am single, I like company of people as much as I like solitude, with some good music, a book maybe and a hot cup of emotions I always wanted to understand. Rains call my figures to play the guitar and my heart to sing. I don’t refrain from doing that. At all.
18. Finding a stronger connection with accidents, destiny, morality, mortality , serendipity and spirituality -I go for these short trips, alone. I call them #soulsearching.
19. Living better — Taking care of my health, sticking around people who care, who are smarter, who are healthier, who are more generous, better givers, more grateful than me.
20. Figuring out new ways of getting high — It’s funny how I never needed alcohol, or weed or anything of that sort to get high. People’s ideas, thoughts, travel and food did all that for me.
21. Staying away from normal — Everyone tries to fit very hard into various buckets, I don’t. I have realised, if you can fall into a bucket, you are too normal. I don’t think I ever want to be that. My other best friend tells me, “Rishi, you are a new shape man”, basically, I can’t really fit in those buckets anyways :D
22. Creating more dots, instead of connecting them -I know it will all make sense one day, and today is not the day for me to figure it out. Doing everything I can, while I still can, to understand later, why I did all that I did.
23. Being grateful, for everything. If you can curse someone for not doing their job, it is only fair to thank them when they are doing their job. The sweeper, the cab driver, the cook, the petrol pump guy, the random stranger who helps you with the directions. You have no idea how powerful being grateful is. I find peace when I am grateful.
24. Finding mentors, gurus, teachers, in everyone, everywhere, all the time.
I believe in miracles, life has been one to me, maybe you should start believing in them too? Just because you don’t see them happen, doesn’t mean they don’t exist . My glass was half empty all my life, only now I realise how full it was. I just had to look beyond my own biases.