Iff..

And, as I write this, I feel the familiar pangs of nostalgia mixed with unease. Life has taken me somewhere that I did not imagine it would, and looking back over my experience, I feel a keen sense that I have strayed significantly from my course. Life growing up was filled to the brim with books, art, and quizzing. I dreamed of living a kind of story that would fulfil that promise; that would allow other people to say: ‘Look at him, it is clearly such an obvious fit!’ As time has gone on, however, my dreams of a perfectly tailored fit have given way to the general ill-fitting grind of adulthood.

And there he was, entirely removed from me: as if I looked in a mirror and saw a fleeting vision from another time and ether. Immersed in stories, art: the arts; as I was as a child, caught up in a dream of what kind of person I would turn out to be, I was convinced that there was a vowel on the horizon. I would be an avid quizzer, I thought. I would become a quiz champion, like one day I would become a champion in life in general. I would read and draw and study and teach and quiz. And win and appreciate life. And, when I watched quizzes on television, shows such as Mastermind India and the Quiz Crucible, I would fanatically absorb everything that was on the screen. The participants were magnificent. I dreamt of what it would be like to stand on the stage, face down at the buzzer, my head dense with answers.

Then, I saw a way to combine these things, perhaps earning my living as a story-teller who could talk my way into a room and then conjure some wonderful or exotic tale to charm my audience. The thought of a regular career was remote and chilling; I wanted to live all the way out on my individual limb, to spin one of those vines around me. Literature and art, the quiz: these things represented not diversions, but possibilities, alternative ways of living; ways to direct my energy, my imagination, my will.

But now I sit at a desk all day, scrolling through spreadsheets and checking off tasks on a to-do list that I did not create but am nonetheless responsible for. The life of someone who focuses on numbers, data, and business processes, does not involve waking up at 5am to work on creative writing, nor does it involve working on starting a collective garden somewhere. The responsibility has certainly shaped who I am. It is not that I do not like my job, I most certainly do. I find the way that I need to shape my mental faculties in order to solve problems and reach job related goals to be satisfying, and there are goals that I would not have reached if I hadn’t gone into it, but it still feels a long way from my childhood dreams.

I took the safer, lesser path, the one that provided an economic livelihood and everything this life affords by way of comfortable material indulgences and, yes, some occasional splurges. I stay in a nice apartment, I can afford good meals and the occasional treat. But I had sold out, and the bizarre, eccentric, and creatively off-grid life I wanted had to recede into the shadows, become a fantasy. I still do not regret a thing. I look in the mirror and see a guy who is disappointed: the wide-eyed 15 year old in many ways; denying the expressive, creating and experiencing and interrogative impulse through the choke hold of a domestically productive economic existence.

It is an uncomfortable mixture of material comfort and the lingering sense that something that needed to be done was left undone. The enthusiasm for books, for the arts, for quizzing: these things are not gone. They are just buried, and it feels to me like someone has thrown something heavy on top of them and stomped on them and walked away. I sometimes try to acknowledge the part of me that still knows those days existed by re-reading favourite books, listening to the music of my youth or combing through YouTube videos to watch Mastermind India or the Quiz Crucible reruns. A flare of joy as I recognise that person in the room, still alive and curious and attending to the world.
Even so, despite all of this, there is still a quiet sense of longing, an unshakeable feeling that I have resolved myself to a form of life that does not quite match my deepest aspirations. This goes beyond the choices of my career, and connects to a larger arc of life. The possibilities for exploration and creative expression that felt urgent in my younger years have given way to routine and obligation. The alternative path I imagined taking: travel, creative work, academic and intellectual pursuits; remains a dream unfulfilled.

Ultimately however, maybe this is not a reflection about disappointment, but about the messy truths of life: growing, changing, taking a path you never thought you would. Life does not ever go quite the way you planned, and the path to where you end up is rarely as straight as you imagined. I might never have become the person I once thought I might become, yet there might still be time to rediscover those passions, to find a way to integrate responsibility with creativity. Perhaps the journey isn’t complete, and there is yet time to honour the hopes of that 15 year old.

These small connections reassure me that there is still a little of the person I once wanted to be in this second act of my life. Eventually, I will find myself on a stage, engaging in theatrical hand movements that mimic the shape of a Q. But rather than a high stakes quiz, it will be a final farewell. At least I hope it will be a good one.
Thus, here’s to the tale: both the one we have trodden, and the one we have yet to; knowing that although we are not always exactly where we would imagine ourselves to be, the old adage is true: it is all in the journey, and who knows, maybe the best pages are still to come.