Mr Hanson recently told me that I often get into a comparisonitus mode and it makes me sad and depressed for a while. My instinctive reaction to that was to blame my folks as this has been instilled in me from the time I was a child when I was compared with all the other kids in our circle of friends by our parents. Hence , comparing our lives with that of others comes naturally to me and even though the logical part of me knows better, the more in-depth part knows only to measure success with that of others.

But today I realized that maybe it’s not all what my parents and society did to me. This I felt after considering the fact that I hate to come second to someone else. Like when I am trekking, I always aim to walk ahead of everyone else and many times people have pointed out to me that this is not how I should walk on trek but I can’t walk behind so lets face it- I am that person on a trek who exerts maximum strength to be at the top first.

This act is not limited to mountains I am afraid and in life when I see others moving ahead of me,  I feel restless and way too depressed at my failure. The funny part is that maybe on trek I end up walking ahead of everyone else but in life, I am way behind the things I should have had.

But who sold this to me that I should have certain number of things to say that I am happy? Unfortunately, I don’t remember but I am very sure it was someone from my large circle of family and school teachers. But whoever it was, I am sold to this idea of having certain things in my life which are not connected with the life path I am on and hence it pinches me at all times. Like I always would discuss with one of my closest friends in college about my “dream” home in Mumbai one day. This flat was on a 7-8 floor and the best part of this flat was that it has one whole wall as a window which would become my favorite spot to spend my evenings and guess what? The same friend now lives in a flat just like this in Mumbai. weird?

There are many such things like a lot of my friends getting promoted, travelling overseas , getting married, having kids, buying diamonds and cars and I am just no where close to any of this. So, I ask myself that where did I fail? What did I do wrong?

It all boils down to being at the right place at right time and I have no other way to address my failure than getting sad over it. I am sorry Mr Hanson, I am like this but I also know that what I have is what I actually pursued as maybe to have that house in Mumbai, I had to take a step to relocate to Mumbai at a point in my life when I just could not have relocated and getting married with kids would make me one in the list but a miserable list as I was not ready for that. And so on.

So maybe I am where I am supposed to be. Free thinker, creator, wanderer and  a lover.