“I want to live a decent, comfortable life, like the way I am leading now. I am happy the way I am.”.
During our day before yesterday’s call with my son that lasted for 3 hours, I asked him, “What kind of life you see for yourself in future?”.
And what he told in reply, though not something I wanted to hear, but his reply did not surprise me.
To be fair to him, at 21 not many have clarity about their future.
I quipped back to my son, who currently in his last year engineering, , “But yours is a borrowed life that is currently supported by me. You want my support throughout your life?” .
His answer was, “No, but I don’t have any such goal at least as off now, for which I would do whatever it takes.”. The origin of the topic of our discussion.
I tried to reason with him, “Look, an individual’s life goal is not a boon, that the god would appear in his dream and deliver. It’s something which the individual must decide and achieve. And it’s trial and error for many, nevertheless.”.
He asked, “If I don’t have a goal, and my life is how I like it, than what is the problem?’.
I answered –
“Look, 15 years back the level of effort needed to reduce 10 kgs of my weight, could reduce only 3 kgs 5 years back. And today the same level of diet and exercise would result in weight gain.
If my target is to keep my weight same, and decide to lead my life on normal diet, I would gain significant weight every day.
My weight can only remain same if I put in effort to bring it down every day.
The point is, anything that matters in life either can get better or worse, can not be the same forever with the same level of effort put in.
If you target to achieve the same level of quality of life that you have today, then the level of your quality of life would actually go down.
A plant at home can only live and grow or be dead.
If the present state of your life is what you want to maintain for yourself in future, then to me that’s a negative progress.”.
Not sure whether he understood.
Good thing was that he himself called the next day, and that’s a change.
Just holding onto it…..