Settle Down: The Indian Paradox of The Unfulfilled Life
Hello, reader. I’ve been away, busy with building the ‘Take Back Your Time Community’- an attempt to rescue us from our screens to get back our focus and productivity. I’ve been writing, both here and on LinkedIn. If you’ve missed them, consider this an invitation to check them out.
A few days ago, 274-279 lives vanished in the smoke of an Air India crash. One moment, the plane takes off; the next, it is a ball of fire, like a scene from a film. The randomness of it all rings a bell: life is unpredictable. We are told to live as if there is no tomorrow, but how many of us truly do?
We are masters of postponement.
I will finish this chore tomorrow; today I am not in the mood.
I will call my parents on the weekend. Right now, I am busy.
I will take the trip next year, when I have more paid leave.
I will quit my job, start that business when I have enough saved.
For the things we truly desire, we live in the ‘will’ world, that comfortable limbo of intention and postponement.
Why?
Because the things we want to do ask something of us: to leave the comfort zone, to face fears, to risk, to learn, to believe—especially to believe in ourselves, in an era where belief is measured in likes and comments.
Take writing this Substack. I began for myself, but soon started thinking, this Substack should become something (no clue what, but something nevertheless), and for that, I need a certain number of subscribers. I wondered: what should I write to gain more readers?
I wrote for others, engaged with notes I cared little for. The slip is easy, almost inevitable. Before the internet, people wrote for themselves, and if a local paper published them, it was an unexpected joy. If you doubt this, ask your LLM about Pessoa, that great Portuguese poet.
We persist in thinking: I will do this, I will do that, when the time comes. If you are from India, that time is when you settle down. It is a shape-shifting lie. It starts with the first job. Then, you settle down with a wife/husband (girlfriends and boyfriends are unsettling). Then, you settle down with a child. Then, you buy a house, a car, LIC policies, and insurance to settle down. Then, the settling down of your child’s career. Then, their marriage. And then you settle down, raising their children. One day, you wake up to realise: two generations have come into being, and you are still settling down.
Why is it called settling down? Why not settling up? Maybe because we are sinking deep into our own expectations or societal norms.
I am not against settling down. But what we fail to see is that there is no settling down, not even for the hermit meditating for years. Everything is impermanent. Everything changes.
That perfect moment, when your stars align with your finances, which aligns with your paid leaves, which then align when the baby grows up a bit, which then aligns with further alignment, well will never happen.
So, JUST DO IT.