Half the Man I am...

Recently, I have been wondering at the lack of wonder in my life. I too was young once, I too looked at life with incredulous eyes. Things excited me. I had dreams and fantasies. But all that has become a thing of the past. Of late, I find myself confined to the monotony of my little life. The high point of my day is sometimes a gourmet dinner, a good word from my superior or the laughs generated from a FRIENDS episode re-run.

I look around and I see small lives just like my own. People with their petty ambitions and irrelevant agendas. This was not the dream I grew up with. I am half the man I once wanted to be. There's nothing wrong in the pursuit of worldly possessions. After all, that is how people grow, but it's just that I wanted to be so much more than this.

Like most kids, I too was raised with the burden of expectations, expectations of greatness. The parameters of greatness used to be defined at that point of time. You must be a doctor, an engineer, a scientist or maybe a soldier of sorts if you wanted to make your folks proud. I am none of that today but my folks are still proud because I earn my livelihood. 

Isn't that ironical? That's all they wanted. For me to be able to provide for myself. And here I was plagued, for the better part of my existence, with the feeling that I was growing up to be a disappointment. Growing up was the worst thing that happened to me. Age and experience stripped away my fantastical ideas and that self-confidence thats so typical of youth. 

Cynicism is a tool but it's also a curse. Cynicism makes you stop dreaming. Speaking of dreams, or the lack thereof, I often wonder about the real meaning of greatness. Who in this world is truly great? A social worker who did some good for some ailing people, or a normal individual born into poverty, who worked hard to finally be able to hold his own? My grandfather was the latter. And he often told me that the real meaning of being a man is being dependable. And he certainly was, having brought me up after my father died.

I wonder about these things because deep inside, I want to be more than what I am. I want to have bigger aspirations than the ones I have today. I want to rise beyond the usual. The only problem is that I am not sure that's even worth the fuss. Up until this point, I have found no merit in asking oneself existential questions like "Why am I here?" because "How does it matter?". The real fact is that we are all limited by our own thoughts, our own individuality.