The lost piece of the puzzle :)

I have been there, a place where everything seems to have fallen apart. The nights where it gets difficult to find hours of sleep and holidays where you literally sulk up in bed all day figuring out what went wrong. In my early career-building days, I was moving places to find my calling. Having left my wish to pursue a PhD, I wanted to explore options that would fit better with my mindset. I switched jobs frequently and quit them abruptly just to sit for months at home and listen to tantrums, the society and family would throw at me. I would spend hours working on things that could be my next calling and have quit those projects innumerable times. There have been times when I wanted to end it all and yet I found courage in the bleakest moments to fight back and not be a memory for my parents. The transition from landlines to early Nokia phones to a dial-up broadband connection and smartphones to watches and whatnot. I was a '90s kid who saw it brewing all up. I belonged to a generation that was brought up eyeing a government job and a generation that saw startups sprouting up and early 20s kids becoming billionaires.

In the past 7 years of my life, I tried to pursue everything that would make me a fit in this fast-evolving era of tech and science, ironically different from the logic of being admitted to veterinary college....the logic of having a government job. These 7 years shaped me in a thousand ways that add to my skills and efficiency in many layers. The challenging months of these 7 years molded me to fit into this new era. Having worked with a central institute, a veterinary college, and a private poultry industry giant helped me gather all my pieces together. While these 7 years seemed like a wreck at that time, making me anxious with every passing week, it all makes sense now. I met people of various strata in these years which humbled me towards the human race. I met people who were pioneers in their field and I met people who struggled to live all together. Now when I sit back on my old trodden chair of a government hospital where I work, I recall having read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho back in my early college days. The book was boring at first, but it all made sense at last. I insist everyone read this one. I am no philosopher, not a preacher, what I intend here to put before you all is, that no matter how tough the road is, one should always keep going. The situations might hold you back up but the contentment along the bumpy road will provide you the only motivation in life. Secondly, yes there might be an exception to this viewpoint which I completely agree with because I have been there, almost a million times.

I have been there when you struggle on most days with your work, your life, your relationships, and yourself while seeking the right support at the right times which indeed brings you to the so-called ground state. Mountains have worked for me as therapy and they still do. I look up these majestic growing snow-laden peaks and try to look for inspiration. But do you know when they look even more beautiful? In darkness..with a full moon sky. You will sink in deeper with this thought and hope you find your moon after a spell of haunting nights.

We all have heard it before that choose your circle wisely. This thing also makes sense. When I look around, I see a handful of people who have helped me understand life a little better. The friends, the juniors, the seniors from college, the colleagues, and the acquaintances. Some of them gave me anxieties, some brought the best out of me in hard times, some people were just so easy to rely on and some were family. I have always felt like a lost piece of a puzzle who tried to fit in once and forever to make the picture perfect and clear. However, now I have chosen to be that one last piece and be a misfit forever. You might try to fit in one puzzle and make it worthwhile, but you never know that another puzzle might be waiting for you to make it complete. So be a misfit, live along the journey, and try reading The Alchemist!