What Next – I

What next? The pull of the possible tempts us to dreams and to dissatisfaction. The practicality of the present keeps us grounded – some would say it makes us stagnate, reducing us to our present rather than our potential.

Could there be a middle path through this that lets us inhabit both worlds? A pithy saying in Hindi warns us of the pitfalls- or the literal fall ahead if one tries to ride in two boats at the same time. Commit to one, it says. But to commit to the present and allowing oneself to float along the lines drawn by precedent and hierarchy is – franlkly – boring for many of us. We seek adventures, we seek to stretch our muscles. Why else would some of us run marathons, seek the thrill of hiking or climbing mountains? One does not stop dreaming just because one has grown up. Indeed, the desire to make the dream real is even more, we have gathered many resources to make our dreams come true.

A life time of delivery though saps us. We forget what it means to dream. We ask ourselves – what do I want. And the answer from within comes – “I don’t know!”

“Surely, I used to dream”, we wonder. What did we dream of becoming when we were little? “Pilot, postman, teacher, telephone operator”, the voice within replies. It remembers. It remembers when other dreams crowded in…doctor, engineer, accountant, banker. Were they ours? Or did they take over before we even began to understand our own selves?

Our early dreams were not our ambition. To have wanted to be a postman did not literally mean that, even if we thought so then. It meant we wanted to be the bringer of connections, of news. We wanted to be a part of the flow where things happened. We wanted to be the one that people waited for. We wanted to help. These were elements of our dreams, not the shape of it. For the shape is determined by our times. A telephone operator? Oh, the excitement of the massive plug in peg boards where magically things connected. Was it the electronic circuitry that challenged us, or was it the possibility of controlling access to the world? Or was it the power of listening in and being at the centre of the community? To ourselves, and now to our children, we must give the gift of knowing ourselves.

To know ourselves was the challenge, and this takes time. Some of us realised it in the practical pedantic everyday paradigm. We saw ourselves steady the ships of our career, we saw ourselves grow families personally and professionally. And we also saw ourselves evolve in the process. Others, we forgot. We forgot that there was a child within who was growing up too, who needed the nurture to be ready with answers when we came to it with questions. It is this inner person who makes our growth possible. It is this inner quest that fuels the outward next. It is these inner resources that bring strength and resilience to our resolve.

Our journey is more than the visible one outside. It is one that must be matched with the one within. As we upskill outside, we must grow within. The child within cannot support a mid life question unless the child too has grown up in self worth, in self awareness and in agency for the self.

(How, you ask? I have taught that a hundred times, and yet for you, it will be uniquely yours. We could build that together, of course)