  There is something I want to write about, but I can't put my finger on it. I get the feel of it, it's about people who want to do something most of their lives, but suddenly find themselves not doing it. They're unhappy, but only sometimes, usually they are cheerful enough. People we meet everyday.
I could be talking about you. More » But I can't write about it yet. I can't be honest. I can't look in the mirror and say I'm perfectly happy with what I am doing with my life. But it's okay . Okay. It's not bad. But it's not me. I never really wanted to be a software engineer. I was studying to be a software engineer around 720 days after the first time I was told to be a software engineer. I was told - "you can't speak clearly enough, you are an introvert, you don't like meeting people, but you are reasonably intelligent, so go and be an anonymous, intelligent guy plugging away at the computer.
You'll earn well, it'll suit you fine. " At 18, I was enthused by all this. I believed I was an introvert, I believed that programming should be the best thing I could do. I took them at their word before I had even looked at a computer. At 18, you're not even supposed to be thinking about knowing yourself. At 18, you're raring to get somewhere, because Tendulkar made his debut at 18 and you always believed you could do the same. And you're afraid. Very afraid. Of not "making it". There is always the need for Approval. Cut to the present. Software programming turns out not to be so bad, after all. It is a passable profession, it deadens reasoning, but it stimulates the mind in other ways.
I think I am good at it, and I even like the work I do. Which, you could say, is a rare thing. But it is not all. There is this something that wants to be expressed, like some music which wants to be played but can't be played. I don't know what it is, but it is there. I know it's got to be let out - but for that, I have to know what it is.
And like an endless loop, I have to start again, to know myself. This is why I can't write about people doing what they want to do, though it is a principle I agree with. I hear people who are unhappy with what they're doing, that they could have been someone else if only they had done that. What could have been if only. Sometimes I meet people who are good at something else, and they love it intensely, only to mask their regret, years later, when they say in a matter-of-fact way, "oh, I was good at that, but I had to leave it".
Let me say this. Don't leave it. I can't write about people doing what they do because I realize it takes something deeper for them do it and derive satisfaction from it. They have to know themselves. "Know Thyself". So many people have said it, urlLink it has become meaningless . It always boils down to that one single, essential philosophy. I can't say that face to face to another person because a person who spouts philosophy is not taken seriously. Philosophers are dime a dozen, philosophers are loony. Know yourself. And philosophy is best when it is self-learnt.
Well, so I ruminate. I look into the mirror and see, only sometimes, that I am not all that I can be. I started on someone else's path, and I did fight to hold my own during it, but this path is not my path. And I did not write this post because I do not know my path. It's supposed to be ironical. I can't put my finger on it yet. 
