Life is a template

My discussion with Ayush started with the context that I met my fourth close friend who had his first child within first year of marriage. All the four are financially well off but I could not figure what made them take this step of getting into parenthood so fast. In my personal opinion, the newly wed couple should spend some time together to understand each other and then plan to extend the family. In all these cases, technically speaking, there was hardly any time spent with that awareness of knowing each other.

So, the discussion went in the direction that why should they wait any further if they can financially afford to have a child. A very valid point but then what is the hurry to have a child so soon?

So if we look at life of a typical person right from the birth, it will more or less follow a template: You are born. You start schooling at the age of three, study in primary school, middle school, high school, slog for SSC and then HSC, enter into engineering/medical college, do lukkhagiri for most of the time, study during the exam period, crack the exams, land up with a good job in the placements, join the company, get married. Once financial stability is achieved, get into parenthood, get involved in the up bringing of your child, make sure the child gets good schooling, completes his degree, and gets married, become grandparent... The story continues and finally one fine day you die.



Have you noticed, for most of the people this is a typical case. One thing logically leads to another. There is no deviation from this template of life. The moment one things is complete, the next logical step is taken. There is no thought process while taking the next step. It just happens. So once the education is over, the next logical step is to join the job. After a some time in job, the next logical step is to get married, and further have children. So, there is hardly any thought process that is needed. Just live the life like a template and follow it. The life will be simple to live. Nothing much to take decision about. You are happy, your parents happy, and all others are also happy.

A careful understanding of this concept answered my question in the first para. It just follows :). Now if we look at the life of people who are doing some thing different in their life, we will see that they are forced to take decisions at every step in their life. One step does not lead to the next local step and that makes their life full of decisions as well as uncertainty. Sometimes they might be labeled as poor decision makers as some of their decisions are proved to be wrong but that is because they have taken that step to go out of the template and create their own life pattern. Like doing some thing is better than doing nothing, taking a wrong decision is better than taking no decision. And the highly successful people will mostly fall in this category who defy the template.

So, next time you take a decision in life, be aware if that is a standard template decision or a non-template one.

(This post is the outcome of my discussion with Ayush Choure. The theme is mainly developed by him during our discussion.)