25 Vayadhinile !

I turned 25 recently and I was thinking about my 25 years of existence in this world. Looking around there are several millions of such young boys and girls who are of the same age as me, facing several challenges in their lives and coming out in flying colours. This post is to all such young 25 year old real superstars!

Ageing is a ubiquitous problem. After all who likes to become old? As and when we age, we start losing many things and finally end up losing our own self. For this reason, ageing is not just a problem, but a crisis!

Most of us, who are in our twenties and thirties and when we look at a happy child without really worrying about anything, use to think, “How good it would have been if I am a child now”. At least once in life every youngster would have thought this way. People start to crave for things that they lose as they age and for things that they don’t or can’t do for the simple reason that they are not young any more.

But the irony is that, all of us had wanted to grow faster when we were children. (Haven’t you ever wanted to grow faster just to beat up your elder brother?) If we introspect, probably there is no irony at all. It is just that we fail to recognize things. People who wish they were young just fail to recognize the problems that they had faced when they were young.

Leave aside the irony part, you might start wondering what problems will a 25 year old young boy would face?? The fact is there are many!

It’s around this age you say good bye to the comforts of the student life and start entering the “real world”. And the entire problem starts with a very simple expectation from all the people around you – that you should make a sudden transition from a boy to a man! If you think that it’s not a problem but a simple thing which everyone face in their lives and I am just over reacting, well, I don’t think so.

All this while, he has been brought up in a society which imposed many ideologies on to him, right from what to eat to how to pray to god. It is around this age, he begins to realize that most of those ideologies don’t make any sense.

He had studied hard to earn degrees only to realize that it is of no relevance to what he does for living. Well, I have seen many people saying that the Microsoft excel that they had learnt in 10th grade is enough to do the job that they are doing. And people start wondering “Why did I get all these fancy degrees?”

He had always dreamt of doing something great and making an impact in the world. He had always been very aspirational to follow his dreams until this age. Finally, when he begins his career with an employer, reality hits at the back of his head and says that all that he can do in his life is this – http://ytcropper.com/cropped/CJ579db039e7b6b

All this realization from the "real world" brings to him a big intimidation about his future life and that's where crisis starts!

Isn’t all this enough to say that crossing 25 is also a crisis? Well if you still don’t believe me, look at people around you. Many are affected by this crisis. Symptoms vary from keeping childhood photos as profile pictures on face book to comparing their career success with their friends.

Well, the point is simple.

“16 vayadhinile” – Kamal Hasaan, “36 vayadhinile” – Jyothika. They are reel life heroes. All the people who are around “25 vayadhinile”, who don’t give up their aspirations, who don’t accept everything that the society imposes onto them, who don’t compromise for anything in their lives and follow their dreams to achieve something and find a meaning for their lives are all, in my opinion, real life heroes. 

There are many real life heroes I look up to. Not every one is a celebrity or an entrepreuner. Because, what is achievement is purely subjective - What you consider as success can be as simple as it can be or as crazy as it can be. Don't let others define whether you have succeeded or not. 

Some people might say if it's subjective, it all sounds rubbish. Probably it’s correct if you intend to be a part of the herd. But the choice remains with you to choose what you want in life or who you want to be.