What you regret the most from your school days?

What you regret the most from your school days? Not having enough marks; not winning a competition; not making enough friends? Here is what makes me regret my school days.

During that time, we were often asked these 2 basic questions. Our answers weren’t genuine and were mostly copied from somewhere.

Reflecting back, I feel so sad that these questions didn’t get the required weight-age in our minds. They should have, surely should have, because these are not routine questions-These are questions that we now regret not having answers to.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

The standard response to this was teacher or doctor and even engineer. We had no idea what each of these professions did or meant. Just because the reaction from the listener would be “wow”, we felt good we said something that made us look “wow”.

And hence at school, social gatherings we continued with that one answer that we thought generated the maximum interest from the listener. We were smart kids, when asked why do you want to become this, we also mugged up a smart answer, which someone at home had helped us prepare.

I wish we really had thought well about this question when we were at school. What is it that I want to be when I grow up? Why should I even want to be something when I grow up?

Yes, we were naive and we didn’t know of all the professions that existed that time. If our parents were doctor, we wanted to be doctors. If someone said being engineer is cool, we started wanting to be one.

I don’t recall even a single classmate of mine saying he wants to work in a corporate and here we are all today-most of us in jobs.

We struggle with these thoughts everyday- What am I doing here? Why am I doing this? Why couldn’t I do anything else? What would make me happy?

We didn’t want to be anything when we were school. Or rather we were happy being just about anyone as long as it pleased the listener. I wish we had a dream then. A dream of doing something or being someone or having some purpose for our adulthood. Something that would have made the meaning of being working on a daily basis much more meaningful and beautiful. It just can’t be about roti, kapda, makaan.

I wish I grew up thinking about work as a passion and not as a compulsion.

What are your hobbies?

This was another question that elicited some humorous replies. Stamp collection was the favorite answer of all. Or leaf collection or some newspaper article collection. We were making up a hobby for ourselves and actually not developing interest in becoming better at what we liked doing.

We loved playing but that wasn’t considered a good hobby and hence we grew up having no hobby or just shifting from one hobby to another during every summer vacations.

A corporate life takes toll on every aspect of your being. Mind, body, soul is all tired. We need something to rejuvenate us. Personal commitments, family responsibilities all add up to stress levels and tension.

It took me years to realize that writing is a hobby I enjoy the most. Most office colleagues of mine still struggle to answer this question for them. Spending time with family is what they call as hobby.

I wish we all had developed and carried on an interest that we could have used today. Having a hobby, spending time doing something you love doing can lift up one’s spirits to unbelievable heights. We could actually start looking forward to the next day because of the excitement of working on our hobby.

Is the regret too much now? Have we really lost out on so much of time? May be. May be not.

I hope I can help my girl and her friends get answers to these basic questions so that they enjoy becoming old and loving what they do for existence.