Overwhelmed by Choice
This is no sob story, just putting a disclaimer out there that I belong to an extremely privileged family and didn’t have to struggle for anything growing up. I had a relatively easier life than most of the people in my country, or rather in the world which I fully acknowledge but having said that, this is just an account of what life has been for me at huge crossroads and how I have navigated through those crossroads to end up where I am today.
Chapter I
Usually, when a child begins to understand and comprehend speech, people, mostly nosy uncles, make it their moral duty to ask children ‘Motha houn kay honar?’ well, it means, What do you want to become when you grow up? For my 6-year-old self, there wasn’t much thinking involved while answering this question, I always blurted out POLICEMAN! Oh, how naive and innocent kids are. Why Policeman? For some reason, I had a weird fascination with guns at the time and recently acquired information that my grandpa had been in the Police. (years later I understood it wasn’t the Police and it was the CBI and my respect for him skyrocketed that day) While growing up being a policeman is sold as a righteous job to kids and I really wanted a gun. I don’t know why I wanted a gun, I was a weird child, still am weird. So my first shot at the question yielded the answer: Policeman.
Chapter II
I don’t remember this question coming up again until 10th grade. Now, I was actually motha (had grown up) and the burning question was now Arts, Science or Commerce. What do I choose? What do I really like? Well in school I was decent at Math and enjoyed Science. (which I realized later was just a fraction of what real Science is)
When I was 15 and in 10th grade, I despised engineers, like really despised them, why? Because every Tom, Dick, and Harry was becoming an Engineer and I saw no novelty in that field, it was overcrowded and it made no sense to my 15-year-old brain to pursue something that everyone was doing just for the sake of it. My parents being engineers thought that if I was sure about pursuing engineering I should pursue a diploma which means basically skipping 11th and 12th grade and studying technical subjects for 3 years. I wasn’t too keen on that, so that option was crossed out.
I think all kids growing up have a fascination for astronomy or rather I did. I enjoyed reading about it and fortunately or unfortunately, Interstellar, the Christopher Nolan film, had just dropped and after watching that I made up my mind, I wanted to do research in Physics, more specifically Astrophysics. I was so enthusiastic about it that I pitched a horrendous idea to my High School Science teacher for a project competition that required making a working prototype, the idea went something like this
HUMANS HAVE ALWAYS WONDERED THAT IF THEY CAN TRAVEL INTO THE FUTURE OR GO INTO PAST. SCIENTISTS HAVE WORKED ON TRAVELLING THROUGH SPACE AND TIME AND STILL CANT FIND A WAY TO DO IT. GOING BACK INTO PAST IS VERY DIFFICULT BUT INTO FUTURE IT CAN BE DONE AND SCIENTISTS ARE TRYING TO DO IT. EACH UNIVERSE HAS A BLACKHOLE AT ITS CENTRE. THE MASS OF A NORMAL BLACKHOLE IS 100000 TIMES THE SUN. THIS MEANS THAT IT HAS A GREATER GRAVITATIONAL PULL ACCORDING THE LAWS OF GRAVITY IF A MANNED SPACESHIP IS MADE TO ORBIT THE BLACKHOLE JUST ON THE BORDER SO THAT IT DOES NOT GET PULLED IN IT CAN TRAVEL AT THE SPEED OF ALMOST 99 PERCENT OF THE SPEED OF LIGHT. IF WE CAN MANAGE TO REVOLVE AROUND THE BLACKHOLE FOR FIVE YEARS AT THE CONSTANT SPEED THE TIME WILL SLOWLY PASS FOR THE HUMANS PRESENT IN THE SPACECRAFT AND IT WILL BE ALMOST 50 YEARS ON EARTH WE HAVE TO FIND THE EXACT DISTANCE FROM WHERE WE CAN ORBIT THE BLACK HOLE WHICH IS SAFE AND NEED TO BUILD A SPACESHIP WHICH CAN ENDURE THE WHOLE JOURNEY
What was I thinking?!? I can’t recollect but looking back, How was I ever going to make a working model out of this? I was very ambitious and young Shantanu didn’t know anything really, but I commend him for trying at least. As you can imagine the idea was never selected, but my resolve was somewhat firm. I wanted to do Research in my life, in which discipline I hadn’t really figured out. I eventually took up Science for 11th, 12th, and my end goal while choosing that was, I WANT TO BECOME A RESEARCHER.
My parents were crazy supportive of my choices, they even took me to visit Bharat Ratna Dr. CNR Rao in Bangalore just so that I could understand what research really is in India and if I was really serious about it. I really give them a lot of credit for always trying to find ways and means to make sure that I was always well informed whenever I made a big decision. Taking up Science was a pure process of elimination for me because I didn’t have any clue what I would do in Arts or Commerce and further my 3 majors were Physics, Chemistry, and Math as I hated Biology and not because I loved the other three. So technically I had made an important decision based on things I didn’t want to do rather than what I wanted to do. This trend has stuck with me for life.
Chapter III
After 2 years of preparing for competitive exams and kind of failing at them, the big question arises again. The 2 years made me realized that I wasn’t cut out for research in any field be it Chemistry or Physics because young me was somewhat in the real world now and I figured the path of research is seldom arduous and frustrating and with no success or job security guaranteed, I didn’t want to become one of those people who at the end of their life are bitter that their accomplishments went unnoticed and didn’t receive any credit. I had secured a scholarship to pursue Pure Sciences but I gave up on that too.
The age-old question came back and stood in front of me like the Grim Reaper ready to take a fresh corpse. There were so many choices in front of me, I could have literally done anything. A small part of me wanted to do something which involved camera work but that part was so small that it didn’t win the majority. I was so confused that again I went back to the process of elimination, What could I do, or rather what can I tolerate for 3–4 years and not undergo too much pressure and the obvious and most viable answer was Engineering. I took up a Computer Science course in a college which I knew I could handle, wouldn’t be too much stress, and was the safest option, but I never figured out what I wanted to do.
Summing Up
At the time of writing this, I am in my Final Year of Engineering, and surprise surprise, I still haven’t figured out what I want to do with my life. I often slip into these existential crises which leads me to question the meaning of life, the purpose of existence because I just feel lost and directionless at times when I see people having so much clarity of thought, and here I am in my room contemplating about things which don’t really matter at all.
The question still comes to bite me and I still don’t know the answer, only the way the question is framed is changed. What do I want to do with my life? Will my job be fulfilling or something meaningful which can help people in the bigger picture or is it just going to be me sitting at a desk from 9–5, staring at a screen, monotonously typing something waiting for the clock to run out?
Most of my life-defining decisions were not additive but rather subtractive in nature. I always found out things I didn’t want to do but never something I really wanted to do. There are literally thousands of choices and career paths out there but the mechanism which is currently deployed makes it so difficult to explore these choices. I still don’t know what I will do with my life. I am literally overwhelmed by choice.
I am supposed to graduate next year and get a B.Tech in Computer Science, but after that, I have no fucking clue.
