Weighing the scales/Tipping of the scales

As every coin has two sides, every prospect has its own pros and cons. It is upon us to weigh them carefully and decide how the scales tip.

Agreed the common path is smoother and easier to trod, but the road less taken promises greater adventures. And if I were to take my fluttering heart into account, all that it wanted to do was throw caution to the winds and “sail away”!

(Curiosity might have killed the cat, but it sure gave me my “new life”)

As was expected, I was flooded with calls from “concerned” relatives each of which invariably contained the underlying message that I could still go back to my “options” and start over with a clean slate. Yet, what they failed to realize was that I was happy with my choice – one that I had taken after careful consideration of the pros and cons.

[Initially, I tried explaining it to them; but after about a year of doing so, I knew it was in vain and stopped. I wanted to learn my own lessons; see for myself what the ‘big bad world’ was like. Although it was slightly intimidating in the beginning, I soon learnt that all I had to do was to hold my own.]

Every time my parents called, they would pick up a new point to argue on. Their favorite one still remains that my current job has nothing to do with what I studied – “What are you doing in a call center or a bank for that matter, when you are qualified to be a journalist?” And my standard reply would be that I love my job (initially, I tried explaining how my degree assisted me in doing a better job at communicating, but they simply wouldn’t hear of it!)

My qualification was good enough to land me a good job at a respectable media house, but not enough to guarantee a “stable” job – one that had fixed timings, fixed remuneration, and benefits. And that was the kind of job that I was looking out for! My position with the bank offered me the better of two worlds: the timings were consistent; job guaranteed and it also helped me hone my communication skills in the meanwhile.

Eventually, the relatives gave up; leaving my parents alone in their “struggle to make me see sense”. And with the obvious happiness that I have found, they too now find it hard to argue me down. Though my mother still tries at times to play the guilt card, I know I have won the battle.