Well, this question is bugging me for the past few months.
What profession would I have chosen if each profession is equally valued and earns me equal salary?

Before I dive into thoughts and weave webs about my feelings of living life , here is something which has fuelled my desires to live and changed my perspective of life completely:
Life is not always about destination. Sometimes the journey is more important and beautiful. Sometimes, you don’t care about where you want to reach. It just takes one special person to make that journey refreshing, enjoyable and memorable.

Once I started thinking about this, I started having a gut feeling that this is not the life I always wished to have. A life which gives me enough money to survive in this inflated world. A life where everything is virtual. A life where we stalk each other on web and develop a simple perception based on what we see and read. The vast majority of my past “likes” on social sites have been given by the people, whom I never met. Even if we have got a popular profile with tons of views, it’s not the profile which gets bored and lonely, it’s just us. Social networks have penetrated our lives to such extent that instead of experiencing real life, we keep our eyes constantly glued to screen and our ears filled with earbuds, putting our energy in judging people online who show others only a fraction of who they actually are in real life. Data says, if Facebook were a country, it would have the third-highest population, behind China and India. How cool!

I wish there were some app which could notify, “Hey! you need to enjoy fresh air. It has been long when you met real people”. After acquisition of Nest by Google, we can even expect such technology in near future.

I always wanted to make money, lots and lots of money so that I could live a king size luxurious life. A big Bungalow, a good wife(really?) and a Mercedes(I didn’t know a better car that time :P) to take a drive. That long drive on the non-ending hilly roads in the dusk of monsoon, with drops of rainy water gently kissing our faces, with a no care in the world. But in this tightly packed busy-busy schedule, all those dreams are lost. Those dead sunken dreams are awoken by just one incident. That one incident happened when I chose to watch Zindagi na milegi dobara (You get to live life only once) on a boring Sunday noon, which pumped adrenaline in my veins. An adrenaline rush to fuel my desire to live. An insight that materialistic things were never meant to be the sources of real happiness.  Sometimes, we don’t need to seek happiness elsewhere. It is just within us. We only need to take a break, hold and look inside.

I have been more interested in photography, cars, traveling while being closer to nature. Nothing is more soothing than capturing moments you live in a camera so that you can relive those moments, freshen your memories when needed. Nature, beautiful nature. That wind whispering through the dry grass. Those golden flowers waltzing in the gentle breeze. Transparent water droplets splashed when a huge waterfall strikes the big stones on its way give a much more pleasant feeling, a feeling of relaxation, a feeling which is non comparable.

With all these thoughts, I realize I have never been so much wrong in my entire 25 years. But all this is only a feeling, like a fragrance floating in air, which can only be felt, which lasts only for couple of moments and then gets lost like we do in this fast moving technological world.

I have never been so lonely. I wish to explore the things around me before it’s too late, before my passion is crushed by the pressure of responsibility.

In the last 10 months, I started exploring the world. Trying out different things have been fun for me. I never thought I would ever get this much time for all these stuffs without hampering my work . They say it’s just about priorities and time management. Some people call me travel junkie, someone that crazy to save every penny for the next travel. Some call me adventure seeker, may be because I lived life to the extreme, may be because I have tried many things: Bungee jumping, Parasailing, Sea walking, Sky diving, Scuba diving.

To know and understand things better, I started picking up things one by one, dancing, piano, poem, photography. And the list goes on. Someone has said, 20 years from now, you would regret less about the things you did than the things you didn’t. I wish I would have started this earlier. Anyways, It’s better late than never.

There are things yet to explore, places yet to visit and experiences yet to garner. Who knows, while doing so, I may find my life companion. I could then someday tell, “And bwoy, this is how your mom and dad met”.

After exploring so many things, traveling seems to be just made for me. A guy who easily mingles with new people, never afraid of trying out new adventures and flexible enough to easily adapt to the new surroundings and culture. Traveling has changed me a lot. It has turned me into a writer, a poet. Someone has rightly said, “Traveling – It first leaves you speechless, and then it turns you into a storyteller”.

You know what, I have turned 25 this year. Why do I still feel like I haven’t achieved much? Why do I still feel I could have done much more? A writing from Ghalib beautifully explains my situation:

Thousands of desires each worth dying for,
Many of them I have realized…yet I yearn for more.

At this age of life, I am,
Too young to start saving for a future, too old to live carefree,
Too young for people to take you seriously, too old to speak your mind freely,
Too young to settle down, too old to switch your profession,
Too young for philosophies, too old for cartoons.

An excerpt from ZNMD which is true to its each word:

Did we ever quit our jobs, switch off our phones, leave all tensions behind and just travel? No. We’ve only been planning of this while life passed us by? This ‘my bwoy’ is a serious problem! We live just once but die everyday at the hands of our mundane lives. May be, it’s time to explore the unexplored and let the road decide our destination.

Signing off for now. Hope you enjoyed reading this. If you have something to share, I would love to hear. After all this is how we connect, by listening, by telling, by sharing, isn’t it?

Copyright © 2016, Aashish Barnwal,  Some rights reserved.