Being Choosy

The trouble with making unconventional choices is that no one really knows how much it takes. How much courage, how much introspection and how much uprooting of things you didn’t give a second thought about. When Robert Frost took the Road Not Taken all of us appreciated his pluck; as teenagers he inspired us all to make unique career choices. But looking upon it a few years later, as not a teenager but a youngster who’s running around life, jumping from one task to another what I find even more admirable is that he stopped in the woods, took a moment for himself and recognized that he had a choice and that there was no necessity, no compulsion to keep walking. Recognition and stopping are the key words here. A lot of us know what an immense decision that is; to go against inertia whether of motion or of rest. It requires an active participation in one’s own life, a quality conversation with one’s own self.

I’m writing this post in first person because I recently grappled with this concept and it took the wind out of me in more ways than one. In a recent conversation with a friend who wanted to take an year off to complete her music studies (but wasn’t allowed to for no other reason except that it simply wasn’t expected of a doctor) I realised exactly how dismal the situation of freedom is, when she said that she felt like her own life wasn’t giving her any time. 

This story ends with these few lines. What more needs to be said? There is no greater tragedy than that loss of autonomy. Time and again, in endless narratives of literature and history, the same tale is repeated, although some end on a good note due to a realisation that in this less-than-ideal world, freedom is not given but taken, most end on the same note as my friend’s: with a resigned acceptance of one’s supposed Fate. 

A different story is that of Literature and I. That I was miserable studying medicine was evident enough to me and my friends. But that I could do something about it was recognised only by them. Even though I was simultaneously doing a Bachelor’s in English through an open university, the limited syllabus kept me discontented and the lack of like minded people to discuss and study my beloved subject with made me feel alone. Three years ago my friends told me that I could take time off after graduation to study English in a proper college and after that if I wanted to, I could do an MD in the medicine field. A typical masters course is of a duration of 2 years. And people shudder to take an year off even. For me to get used to that idea, that it wasn’t an utter impossibility took nearly an year and almost daily convincing sessions. There is no sudden moment of epiphany here, I had to take it slow. And at every step I had to recognise the choice I had. Everyone asked me “How the hell?” and I didn’t have a better answer than a shrug of my shoulders. I knew I couldn’t believe in it completely. So to at least further that little belief I had I told more people, I told them that I would do it and then I told myself that I would do it. I kept postponing applying for an actual exam but kept reading almost incessantly. On a night that I couldn’t sleep I prayed for strength and applied to the least daunting entrance exam of all the universities I wanted to get into and wrote the exam with as little confidence as I had initially. One week later, I found out that I got in and that the idea that seemed too far fetched and too radical three years ago turned into my reality. 

I’m still incredulous, I’m still waiting for the epiphany to come and I’m still in disbelief that this is my life. But my ultimate point here is that that is all okay. You don’t have to do everything at once, you don’t have to do everything by yourself. Sometimes it is okay to just stop for as long as you want. It is okay to start with the smallest of steps that make sense for you. It is okay to shock and scandalise everyone by making a choice that is 100% your own. Funnily enough in the end, everyone who didn’t believe you will admire you for going off the beaten track. That is probably the ultimate irony of the society we live in ; we admire the very freedom we try our best not to bestow. 

The nature and norm of any society is to fit in neatly and to do that it tries to cut the sharp and un-uniform edges off of the people that form it. But the very marrow of being human, as Atul Gawande put it, in his “Being Mortal” is to want to retain the autonomy, the freedom to be the authors of our own lives. “Author” is an interesting word that immediately confers power and responsibility over a life. When one becomes an author, all sorts of choices open up, the most trivial things become an active decision, from one’s name to where to live, what job to do, what relationships to form, what to eat, what battles to fight, what to let go of, how to spend a weekend, how to die, anything and everything. All these choices hide in plain sight for all of us too. We only have to stop and recognise them for what they are to change our stories for good.