What's Next?

Life is about tackling the questions that come your way when you are sipping on your tea in a place that brings you solace. These questions help you find a purpose, a goal. These are the questions without which you cannot move into the future. People tell you to focus on living in the present. But, merely ‘living’ in the present would do no good to you. Living in the present means working on a process that takes you to the future. The focus is on the process, not the future. But, if you’re going to completely neglect the idea of having a future, you’re in for a hard time. Great leaders of the World had a vision for the future, but they focused on the process to get there. Imagine what would have happened if Steve Jobs would have told you about designing a product that would react to your touch, and never launched an iPhone. We would have called him a crazy man. Ironically though, you have to be crazy to bring about change in this World. But just crazy is not enough, you need to have the drive to answer the questions that life asks you when you are at peace.

I have been answering these questions with all might until now. And, touchwood, I have been pretty good at it so far. Life asked me one such question when I was having a quarter-life crisis. And my answer to that was an MBA. Well, now that I look back, this one question has been asked of me repeatedly. At each milestone of my life, whenever I sat in my happy place, satisfied and accomplished there it was, standing in front of me, begging me for an answer. Yet again, while I sit back and relax, with one foot out of the MBA door, Life throws at me the same-old washed-up question again - WHAT’s NEXT?

Honestly, whenever this question was asked before, I did not have an answer. I never knew what was next. And this time, it is no different. Heck, Life has been asking me the same question time and again, how do you expect me to have a different answer? So my answer to that question is - I don’t know!

Let’s go back in time for a bit. When Christopher Columbus (we are going way back, I know, whatcha gonna do about it?) set sail, did he knew where he was going? I don’t think so. But hey, he discovered America! (Aren’t we all grateful to him? After all, he gave us a country to make our careers in after we are done doing our Engineering degree.) The point being, the greatest sailors in history didn’t know where they were sailing to, they just kept thrusting in undiscovered waters until they found land and made a name for themselves. Now, I’m no Christopher Columbus, but I have just one tiny little thing in common with the Captain - the courage to sail in undiscovered waters! I have done that before, each time Life has asked me what’s next.

This time, it’ll be no different. I’m a little embarrassed to say that I haven’t learned an important survival skill - swimming. But, I have survived numerous storms in the ocean of unknown before. All because I was wearing a Life jacket, and that jacket was the people that surrounded me. I have always rated the people close to me higher than I have rated myself. Because, when you don’t know how to swim and you’re drowning, they will lend you a hand and pull you up! I am blessed to have a few helping hands in my life so far, and I am positive that I will have them all in the future too.

So, while I don’t have an answer to Life right now, I am willing to find one. I am more fascinated now because after feeling a bit stuck in the present, I am finally going to ‘live’ in the present. The process of finding a way into the future is amusing to me again. And as I set out to explore new waters, here I am a tad bit scared but a lot more confident that this time, I will find my America!