The faulty yardstick.

Ask a beaming child what he/she wants to be; a never-ending list will start pouring in from their curious minds to your conventional one. When we are in the germination phase, every other possibility seems easier to get; the only at that stage seems to be age. Those little packets of happiness, joy, and tantrums view being an adult as a blessing. They hurriedly want to be done with the years of being scolded, disciplined, and schooled. Yet, a ray of hope flickers for them when they think about the forthcoming years of freedom. And I believe we all pass through this stage of wishing our height to increase exponentially and responsibilities to decline arithmetically.

But the grass is not greener on the other side, or is it! The long list of “I want to be” is greeted by a sea of expectations. The sea chokes and squeezes most of the list, and eventually, it includes only the creamy options. After all, it is only the churning of the milk for hours together that gives us a taste of the real cream. The means to success boils down to a few options. The hierarchy is already set; your choice depicts your place in the so-called innocuous strata. Going by the rules is always a safe journey. It is said conventional ways lead to timely happiness. Pointing the finger at a bunch of unconventional ways is not only justified but reasonable as well because, after all, your choices define you.

For someone to be successful, a house in a posh area coupled with a seven-digit salary is the basic criterion. It is only this way that one can be happy, content, and desirable. But, of course, making from rags to riches is a different story altogether. But what if there is a fault in this yardstick? What if the available choices fail to capture the choices blossoming in someone’s woven dreams? What if the prime motive for someone is not a seven-figure income? What if we are severely restricting the very essence of happiness? We have multiple ways of rationalizing these questions and, at the same time, coming up with million solid reasons to follow the trodden path.

But a new way of thinking harms none; a new idea hinders no one’s growth, a small dream is no bottleneck in the path to success. Probably we have this oblivion fear of leading a new mantra to success and happiness. We are afraid to look out of the well. We want to see only one side of the journey. Possibilities are immense, subjected to our willingness to let them in and make them a measurement of all those intangible criteria laid out for success. We all should have a say in defining the genius in us. One-way measurement is always faulty. The sooner it is fixed, the better the yardstick.