This is a realization article. Now, I don’t know what it means—if this term doesn’t exist, then I’ve just invented it. In my dictionary, a realization act is something that made me realize anything in this life, something I’ve been doing all along but has turned out to be either wrong or not quite right.
These are the good realizations.
I was aware of the fact that we as humans are shaped up to be some being. Even when I see a criminal, I do try understanding what could have happened in his life, in his childhood, that planted the seed for the heinous act he committed later. Now, it doesn’t make them any less guilty, but it does help in understanding why the bad originated in the first place. Why did bad become bad and not good?
Not all of us are brought up into criminals, but all of us have been brought into something—something that we are today. In fact, in most parts of our lives, we are being told about doing something in a certain way, simply because it was supposed to be, because it was expected to be that way. The society, all that we see around us today, is basically an assumption of humans for how things are just supposed to be. We get up every day, we’re supposed to go to our jobs, children are to wake up early in the morning and go to school, then get good education, then get good careers—this is the hunky-dory pattern of life around us. This is what we have assumed would happen. This is how we have designed this society, and this is what and how everything is expected by humans to happen in order to live.
Just like how everything else is expected to be a certain way, humans on individual levels have some expectations in their lives. Actually, it’s not some—there are gazillions of them.
Oftentimes, we have goals in life which are, in most cases, the ultimate result of society’s expectations in the form of your parents’ or your career guides’ expectations. And because you are so constantly fed on them, they become yours. Only a few are able to break that barrier and expect something of their own, but even in that case, there are expectations. Some expectations, in order to be fulfilled and in the conquest of them, we live this life and set the net of plans. Each and every choice and decision is made in realization of that dream or expectation.
But life just happens to us. And it happens to all of us. Let me tell you one thing—even if you set out from your home thinking you have envisioned everything, every possible happening, and you have prepared yourself for them, life will show up with something you have never experienced before. Just a small little stone in your path and it will deviate your whole trajectory. Then neither would the journey be the same, nor the expectations.
Neither would the world be the same, nor the people, and ultimately the raison d’être would alter. It won’t be the same you. This won’t happen in any of the ways you expected.
I always think of how life has happened to other people, how they maneuvered their way through it, and what they had in their minds when they set out from their homes. That is the reason why I really sometimes like listening to people’s stories—their life experiences. And there are many people I have noticed who did not reach where they wanted to, or in some way, this is not what they expected of life at all. It came out as a surprise, all different from their imaginations and their expectations.
There are many examples, but I always think of where Atif Aslam would have reached if he had accomplished what he set out from his home for. He always says he wanted to be a cricketer, and I think he even went for some auditions. But then things happened, situations changed, stones arrived, and trajectories changed. He ended up singing—and not just singing. He is one of the most paid, popular, highly acclaimed singers of Pakistan who has been able to cross boundaries and spread his fame across different regions. And I just think, what could have happened in another life where he might have been selected as a cricketer? Would we have got the next Pakistani boy in Bollywood, or somebody who has the potential to compete with international stars, or a voice so acoustically rich that you could feel every texture and feeling in it? Could he have had this much money, this much fame, this much acclaim, this many fans? Would any of this have happened?
These days I also think of another example—Kapil Sharma. I am recently diving really deep into all of his performances, and at the core of it, I am trying to find out what happened to him in his life, how he set out from his home, what he wanted to be, what happened to him, and then what actually came out in the end as the final product. When he first came to Bombay, he wanted to be an actor, and that is what he auditioned for. But once again, there was just that one stone in the path, and he had to deviate his path around it. In the end, the whole journey, the whole route had changed, and he ended up in Comedy Circus. From there, it was just his rise. He became one of the most popular, one of the most fantastic comedians of this region. I think his story is that hunky-dory success story which is usually printed in every “how to become successful” book—that usual rags-to-riches story, like how hard work can get you somewhere, how your work can make you something, how dreams can turn into reality. They do come true, but was he really wanting to be a comedian all his life? He set out to be someone else, and yeah, good things happened to him, but they happened to him. He did not expect them to happen this way. And I think once again, this is all what life is.
These are only just a few stories, but if we wander around us, this happening of life is inculcated in each of our lives, in our daily routines, in the small usual chores of life which we are preparing for. We don’t know how we are reacting to it, and our reactions are goaded by the happenings. These things happen, and their happenings change our reactions, and our reactions then start as a chain reaction, in which the whole process becomes something with an altogether new destination.
So what is this? If things are not going to happen the way you wanted them to be, you expected them to be, you thought of them, you prepared for them—what is the benefit of all the preparations, all the mind thoughts, the overthinking? Everything you set out for is not going to happen exactly your way. It will not follow your orders, neither your expectations nor your hopes, nor your beliefs either. It does not follow any of our beliefs, expectations, or assumptions. It is just on its own. Things are on their own. Life is on its own, and it just happens. It just strikes us sometimes like lightning, and it blows every cell inside the body, and it takes us from one world, and puts us in an altogether new world where we have to find our way through it, because it just did not happen how we planned. You stayed up all night, you planned all those years, but then right when you wanted to, right when it had to happen, it did not. It simply could not, because things were just not your way.
Things are not going to happen your way. Things don’t obey our expectations, or exceptions, or beliefs, or hopes, or anything. They don’t follow us. They don’t look for us. They don’t care for us. They don’t even think about us. I think they just think of their routine boring schedule of going out in the world and creating some kind of situation, and happen whatever the way they want to.
I wanted to end this article with the existential crisis of human inability to predict or plan this life, but as I said, things DON’T happen as we want them to. So whilst I was writing this article, it didn’t come as per my expectation, and in the midst, I got the realization of adding TWO MORE words to the title, to make it: “Things are not going to happen Your Way“, but you sure can change your way around them, so they fit in your world.
And that is all what I think life is about. That is all worth living for—for a supposed number of years in this world—that you can prepare decades for just one moment, but still, once you stand at that point of life, you can be utterly unprepared. You always get something unexpected, something that was not supposed to be there, something that is simply out of the syllabus for us. But we just have this certain charm in us of making things work, of making our way around them, and making them fit in our world, in our beliefs, in our hopes, and obviously in our imaginations. So then those imaginations can later be seen in this real world.
