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.
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