Lessons of life....

It’s been more than 5 years now that I am out of college. I always tell my friends that 22nd year is the best year of your life. It is because you are just out of your college and probably you are just into your new job. There are no high expectations at office nor are you answerable to anybody for your studies, expenses, for the time you spend. To say the least you really do not have any responsibility on you. But the situation changes fast as you grow. I personally feel that I have changed a lot in last 5 years. In our instant gratification culture, it's easy to forget that most personal change does not occur as a single static event in time, but rather as a long, gradual evolution where we're hardly aware of it as its happening. We wake up one day and suddenly notice wild, life-altering changes in ourselves. Our identities slowly shift, like sea sand getting pushed around by the ocean, slowly accumulating into new contours and forms over the passage of time.It's only when we stop years or decades later and look back that we can notice all of the dramatic changes that have taken place. Last few years were certainly dramatic, but here are 3 lessons I have learnt hard:

1.Fail early and often: Time is the only asset you have.

When you are young, your greatest asset is not your talent, not your ideas, not your experience, but your time. Time grants you the opportunity to take big risks and make big mistakes. I started investing in stock markets in the beginning of my career. A little more lust for money tempted me to put all the eggs in one basket and play bigger games in derivatives. Eventually I lost all my money but I learnt my lessons hard. I still thank God that I lost it all at a very young age when I had no responsibilities on me and neither was I answerable to anyone. Moreover, you aren't strapped by all of the financial responsibilities that come with later adulthood: mortgage payments, car payments, daycare for your kids, life insurance and so on. This is the time in your life where you have the least amount to lose by taking some long-shot risks, so you should take them. Nevertheless, it thought me the value of money and I learnt basic investing lessons by losing.

2.You can’t force friendships.

There are two types of friends in life: the kind that when you go away for a long time and come back, it feels like nothing's changed, and the kind that when you go away for a long time and come back, it feels like everything's changed. I am out of home since 11 years now. I have stayed at Aurangabad, Mysore, Hyderabad, Pune and of course my home town, Hingoli. That means I have left a lot of friends behind in various places. What I have learnt is you cannot force friendship with anyone. You might have very good friends in college or probably in your early career when you are single, but it is the truth of life that times change, people change, responsibilities do come in their way and slowly you lose keeping in touch with many of them. It’s not that those people whom you didn’t keep contact with were bad people or bad friends, just that life becomes too busy. It’s nobody’s fault. We have to reconcile and resign to the fact that life change, people change and so do their and your own priorities. What happened in your late teenage might not happen in your late 20s and early 30s. Those cacophonous fantasies and activities eventually fade out.

3.The sum of small things matters much more than bigger things.

We have a propensity to assume things just happen as they are. We tend to only visualize the result of things and not the arduous process (and all of the failures) that would go into producing the result. I think when we're young, we have this idea that we have to do just this one big thing that is going to completely change the world, top to bottom. I have faced such situation prominently at office, when I see seniors around me who are well settled, have a good home, a big car and spend lavishly on their lifestyle. And this is the phase when you too want exactly same things in your life and you start dreaming big. That’s a good thing btw. But we need to realize that those "big things" are actually comprised of hundreds and thousands of daily small things that must be silently and unceremoniously maintained over long periods of time with little fanfare.