To me, my fears are my enemies. Maybe this is true for everyone. Even Yann Martel has a beautiful
say about fear.
“I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always ... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi
Yesterday when I was telling my in-law about Nidhi's driving and how she overcame her fear of driving and about Sangeeta's driving, I looked back at myself. I must have been the world's slowest learner. I learnt twice from different driving schools in India. I learnt once in the US also. I had a car since 2003. I remember being scared to death to take my car out. It would lie in the parking for months, if Hiran was abroad. Even when I was struggling to get an auto or despised auto drivers for their unreasonable fares, I never gave it a second thought that I could drive my car. It took me YEARS to come out of the fear. I feared that I'd kill someone on the road. That, probably is the top most fear of any new driver. Being a seasoned driver now, I give this piece of advice to new learners. "If you drive in the city, there is NO way you can kill someone. You can at the most dent the cars. Say Sorry and pay for the damages". This piece of advice when taken seriously, helps you overcome your fear of driving. It gives you that confidence that nothing very bad can happen. I'm digressing. What I wanted to say is, all of us have fears. Reasonable and unreasonable fears. They limit us. I want to know how we overcome it. I don't remember how I got the courage to start driving. I used to drive at odd hours first, so that there would be no traffic to deal with. I would just need to be comfortable with the car. Slowly, I progressed. I could not lift from 1st gear so many times. I would never be able to slow down, stop and start off on a slope (and mind you, every traffic signal in Hyderabad is on a slope as if to mock you). I could never reverse properly. I could never park properly. I never understood where my car's boundary ended. These are problems everyone faces.
You progress one step at a time. You take a while to become a good driver. Today, I can proudly claim that I am a good driver. Many guys have complimented my driving (it's rare for guys to appreciate women driving). When someone buys cars they ask for my opinion. They give their new cars to me to drive. I've reached this far. I still cannot drive on highways. I cannot park parallelly.
I cannot drive in the US as I still don;t get most of the rules. My another fear about the road is getting lost. I fear getting lost. I draw elaborate maps to reach a new destination. In the US, I am almost always overwhelmed by driving and the fear of getting lost (since I don't own a GPS or mobile).
I think, I will address these issues as and when needed. So many women have managed to overcome the fear of driving and have started to drive. It's a proud thing. I feel proud and also envious when I see really old women driving around with their friends. If someone drives better than me, anyway that make me envious.
The other fears I have overcome are - my fear of public speaking, my fear of installing and using new software tools, my fear of learning hardware specs. I was such a coward in school that once I was addressing the assembly and I forgot my lines and stood blank. I never ventured into public speaking after that debacle. The first time, I remember, I went on stage next was at Mars telecom. We had a small and supportive group. My brother Ranga and I did a play and it was a super duper hit -thanks to Ranga's fancy clothes and his dance numbers. That gave me confidence. I was never a confident person and that reflected in my poor public speaking skills. I was afraid to express my opinions, lest people should mock at me. Today, I have overcome that fear and I am a really confident person. I talk my mind. I am not afraid of asking silly questions. I am not afraid of being judged as an idiot. I openly shared my ignorance about many things. But, that happened only after I became confident of who I am, what I know, what I want, etc. Once you reach there, the opinions of others does not affect you that much.
There are things that I fear even now. I fear or hate the IT jobs.. I hate connecting machines. I hate participating in meetings. I hate to see too many mails on my inbox every single morning. I hate to debug the things that are caused by someone's else code. I hate that I keep forgetting many things that I spent so much time learning. I hate working on deadlines. I hate being pressurised. I hate upgrading to new software and having to learn new tools always. I do like to understand the design of things. I make elaborate notes. I did work a lot on my weaknesses at Brocade. I did evolve into a better engineer but never as good as I'd have liked to see. I lack that natural talent for software. I could not make up for what I did not have, with just hard work. It was too demanding. I could not work endlessly on things that I did not fantasise or rather hated. I hated when I got stuck. I hated it when people did not appreciate what I did. Everytime I leave my IT job, I vow never to get back. But, eventually all the times I have got back.. and I have definitely improved at each stage. Today, I am at a crossroad. Which path to take? Should I get back to IT and hope that things will turn out well?
Should I pursue a Masters in something I like? Will I land up a good job if I do so?
I don't know what to do. I have been waiting and hoping that my passions and abilities will surface and I will be able to choose my path. So far, I have not succeeded. I hope I will one day succeed in choosing an apt path and succeeding the way I'd like to.
say about fear.
“I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always ... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi
Yesterday when I was telling my in-law about Nidhi's driving and how she overcame her fear of driving and about Sangeeta's driving, I looked back at myself. I must have been the world's slowest learner. I learnt twice from different driving schools in India. I learnt once in the US also. I had a car since 2003. I remember being scared to death to take my car out. It would lie in the parking for months, if Hiran was abroad. Even when I was struggling to get an auto or despised auto drivers for their unreasonable fares, I never gave it a second thought that I could drive my car. It took me YEARS to come out of the fear. I feared that I'd kill someone on the road. That, probably is the top most fear of any new driver. Being a seasoned driver now, I give this piece of advice to new learners. "If you drive in the city, there is NO way you can kill someone. You can at the most dent the cars. Say Sorry and pay for the damages". This piece of advice when taken seriously, helps you overcome your fear of driving. It gives you that confidence that nothing very bad can happen. I'm digressing. What I wanted to say is, all of us have fears. Reasonable and unreasonable fears. They limit us. I want to know how we overcome it. I don't remember how I got the courage to start driving. I used to drive at odd hours first, so that there would be no traffic to deal with. I would just need to be comfortable with the car. Slowly, I progressed. I could not lift from 1st gear so many times. I would never be able to slow down, stop and start off on a slope (and mind you, every traffic signal in Hyderabad is on a slope as if to mock you). I could never reverse properly. I could never park properly. I never understood where my car's boundary ended. These are problems everyone faces.
You progress one step at a time. You take a while to become a good driver. Today, I can proudly claim that I am a good driver. Many guys have complimented my driving (it's rare for guys to appreciate women driving). When someone buys cars they ask for my opinion. They give their new cars to me to drive. I've reached this far. I still cannot drive on highways. I cannot park parallelly.
I cannot drive in the US as I still don;t get most of the rules. My another fear about the road is getting lost. I fear getting lost. I draw elaborate maps to reach a new destination. In the US, I am almost always overwhelmed by driving and the fear of getting lost (since I don't own a GPS or mobile).
I think, I will address these issues as and when needed. So many women have managed to overcome the fear of driving and have started to drive. It's a proud thing. I feel proud and also envious when I see really old women driving around with their friends. If someone drives better than me, anyway that make me envious.
The other fears I have overcome are - my fear of public speaking, my fear of installing and using new software tools, my fear of learning hardware specs. I was such a coward in school that once I was addressing the assembly and I forgot my lines and stood blank. I never ventured into public speaking after that debacle. The first time, I remember, I went on stage next was at Mars telecom. We had a small and supportive group. My brother Ranga and I did a play and it was a super duper hit -thanks to Ranga's fancy clothes and his dance numbers. That gave me confidence. I was never a confident person and that reflected in my poor public speaking skills. I was afraid to express my opinions, lest people should mock at me. Today, I have overcome that fear and I am a really confident person. I talk my mind. I am not afraid of asking silly questions. I am not afraid of being judged as an idiot. I openly shared my ignorance about many things. But, that happened only after I became confident of who I am, what I know, what I want, etc. Once you reach there, the opinions of others does not affect you that much.
There are things that I fear even now. I fear or hate the IT jobs.. I hate connecting machines. I hate participating in meetings. I hate to see too many mails on my inbox every single morning. I hate to debug the things that are caused by someone's else code. I hate that I keep forgetting many things that I spent so much time learning. I hate working on deadlines. I hate being pressurised. I hate upgrading to new software and having to learn new tools always. I do like to understand the design of things. I make elaborate notes. I did work a lot on my weaknesses at Brocade. I did evolve into a better engineer but never as good as I'd have liked to see. I lack that natural talent for software. I could not make up for what I did not have, with just hard work. It was too demanding. I could not work endlessly on things that I did not fantasise or rather hated. I hated when I got stuck. I hated it when people did not appreciate what I did. Everytime I leave my IT job, I vow never to get back. But, eventually all the times I have got back.. and I have definitely improved at each stage. Today, I am at a crossroad. Which path to take? Should I get back to IT and hope that things will turn out well?
Should I pursue a Masters in something I like? Will I land up a good job if I do so?
I don't know what to do. I have been waiting and hoping that my passions and abilities will surface and I will be able to choose my path. So far, I have not succeeded. I hope I will one day succeed in choosing an apt path and succeeding the way I'd like to.
No comments:
Post a Comment