The Eternal Pursuit...

The pursuit of happiness has always been a tricky one. I am no one special. I am an average guy born to average difficulties like any other person. But I don't stay happy. Now I am not sure whether other people do but I'd like to think so. Otherwise, what's the point of living? 

I do experience bouts of happiness every now and then but it is usually followed by patches of melancholy. I don't understand it. Although my life had a rocky start, things kept getting better. It was more or less a smooth ride since my eleventh year, but joy always eluded me.

Other people seemed to notice it too. I put up a happy face all through childhood and even became the class clown, but I could never manage to make or keep many friends. I had a lot of admirers though, and for quite some time, the attention I got from them kept me going. But attention is no substitute for self-esteem. My self-worth or rather the lack of it kept on eating me from inside. It affected everything, my life, my relationships, and my body.

The lack of happiness led to cynicism. This cynicism engulfed my personality and I just couldn't look at anything with trust. This affected everything else. Most of all, it affected my perception of people. I started relating more with people who had tragic pasts and difficult personalities. That is a recipe for disastrous relationships. So much so that even when I did come across people who were healthy and balanced, I managed to scar them with my antics. 

My lack of self-esteem made me careless towards my body. I showed no concern for my well-being, I ate whatever I felt like eating and never exercised. I kept gaining weight. I gained over 30 kilograms in a couple of years. This further tarnished my self-image. 

The only thing that was going well was my career. I worked hard and was tenacious. I stuck to my first job and kept rising through the ranks. This was a source of some solace in my otherwise demure existence. That was until I got my last promotion. In my last promotion, my company decided to put me in a completely different profile than the one I was in. 

I took it up as a challenge but it proved to be too much of a change. I hated the way this vertical of the business functioned. Thus, even though I was handling the job adequately, my disdain for it made it too much of a struggle. It started getting on my nerves and I was eventually left in a state of panic and dismay. 

I am 25 years old now. I am at that age where your family's safety net is almost gone and you need to take care of yourself. Faced with serious responsibility, I realize I can't go on being unhappy. It's just not right. But as I said earlier, staying happy doesn't come easily to me. So I have started trying to find reasons to be happy. And the first step is to eliminate factors that make me sad. 

That is easier said than done. There are things in life that you just can't undo, For example, the loss of a loved one. I will have to live with these losses but I need to stop them from defining who I am. It is a slow process, a process of personal growth. I introduce myself differently now as compared to five years ago. I think that is personal growth.

I am Ian Panda, a dreamer and a professional. I stopped being Ian Panda, the orphan a long time ago. I fend for myself. I am reliable. And that defines who I am. I am moving on from the demons of my past, the wrong that I did. I am moving towards tomorrow, a better place in my life. I am trying to smile more often. I am trying to be more expressive about how I feel.

I am trying to be a better ME.