the ultimate success is freedom

I’m a person with high expectations. Not only for myself but for those around me. I’m stubborn, a perfectionist and just a little rigid when it comes to standards. I’ve been told to be a little unrealistic in terms of expectations, but also knowing me, I don’t let naysayers bring me down anymore. I push boundaries, not because I want to pick fights, but because I believe there’s so much more we could achieve as a species.

I’m direct and some would say uncompromising. Though, I don’t see this as a bad thing, at all.

It was all impossible before it was done.

Think about it.

The reason why we’re here.

It’s purely accidental.

The assembly of subatomic particles making up matter, forming the universe, the planets, then somehow, with the right collision of the particles under the right conditions, pre-eukaryotic cells, then eukaryotic cells – singled celled organisms with a nucleus, then multiple celled ones which eventually led to more complex organisms, to which human beings are classified under.

13.8 billion years later, I’m typing away on a product called the MacBook Air.

All of which is absolutely unthinkable a mere century ago and will cease to function within the next century.

So, what isn’t possible?

If we looked past the day to day. Social structure and society and norms that holds us. We are essentially free agents, not that much different from the particles that just happened to make us up.

The paradox of human existence is that, we’re all so insignificant but also important at the same time.

On average, each of us has 25,000 days on earth.

I find that number more sobering than the approximate 70 years that translate to.

And given that average, I presently still have 16060 days.

385,440 hours.

If you ask me, that’s quite shocking, as I had predicted the number being closer to 1 million, before I did the actual calculation.

We’re free in the sense that permanence does not exist, except maybe in our minds.

Everything you are, everything you own, everything you do – will be undone in due time.

When I think about life this way, in the grand scheme of things.

And the truly freeing element to our existence is our consciousness and the power of choice. We could chose to be settled in the cubicle life where everyone is standardized in solid coloured shirts and grey, blue, black slacks and dress shoes. The minion type of lifestyle – or we could choose to get out there and discover the unexplored way of living a full life.

Essentially, after writing in this blog and reflecting on life in this way – I realized what I wanted out of life is ‘more’ but not in monetary terms, or the overnight success everyone else seems to be after – I just want to be busy with something that occupies my time, something I enjoy and create something decidedly unconventional but still making it work.

Even though I’m still presently stuck in the city I absolutely will leave one day, I’m more inclined to go and seek novel experiences, experiment – just to see, what sort of happy accident I find in the process, so by the end of my 385,440 hours, I can say that this journey was worth every day, hour and second.

And that would be my ultimate success.