Coelho.. Part 2

[Continued from yesterday...]

So… what was I trying to say? Well… even we `loafers’ have some idea of what we want to do… it’s just that we don’t realize that that might be it. Like that time when everybody applauded your acting, or when the seminar you helped organize went so smoothly, or that person that you had a refreshingly comfortable and long chat with, or the time you managed to throw out just the right sales pitch and clinched that deal.

[Double Coffee]

The popular reference to most of the 10 Richest People in the World being college drop-outs is worthy of mention when discussing the issue of ambition. A walk down the road-often-trod is unlikely to lead to greatness, or, well, most people would be great [and then only the greater and greatest among the great would be known as great, and the average great would only be known as…. well... not so great.] Anyway, the point is that these drop-outs walked a different way. To almost quote Star Trek, they boldly went where… few men had gone before. So what made them do that? What made them break tradition? Perhaps they felt like doing things differently, or just followed their heart. Perhaps they realized that it’s difficult to streak ahead when there’re too many people running, and that they had to discover a different arena. [Funny; when I was small, I used to kick goals through the posts in the adjoining empty field, but nobody noticed.]

So why is following your heart on your own, a difficult thing to do? Although, it does sound simple; Adventurous, exciting, high-risk/return [sounds like an equity investment]. Once again, we hold back because of our comfortable options: we’ve always got vanilla. So, in some sense, I guess we should respect those college-dropouts. However, if one were to look into their background, it would reveal that most of them were driven by desperation... they didn’t really have vanilla, just stracciatella [which incidentally, is doing rather well in Europe].

Ofcourse there’s always people like that guy who wanted to be a musician, who’s scratchy music record companies refused to purchase, who ended up entertaining the railway passengers. The failures are always there as a warning to the reckless, but they end up as being strong agents of discouragement. While those of us who are sitting comfortably in front of our screens can hide behind this excuse, it’s pretty sad that we cannot boast “It’s what I always wanted to do… so one day I got off my ass and decided to just do it.”

Well, all that apart [and at a final conclusion, I think] anybody could easily live a pretty content life and enjoy it if he was oblivious of any calling. But if you ponder long enough over what you’ve just read, I have the feeling that it’s going to gnaw at the back of your head like that song that you wanted to download, but can’t remember, or that strange dream you had last week…