I grew up an ambitious person. I have talked more about my ambition in a previous post before, but I love context so I will elaborate a bit more.
Growing up in an income-constrained family in a tier 3 city in a not-so-developed part of India, I saw my father start a business, leaving his stable but not-so-well-paying job to ultimately land us in a comfortable position, financially and otherwise. Two things stood out for me:
- He lifted the family (ours and extended) in more ways than one. Not just financially, but also in his outlook towards the world. For example, he was (and still continues to be) amazing at building relationships with people from scratch, even though he is an introvert himself. It is not something I found to be very common among the people I usually encountered. He discards rituals and tradition for the sake of just performance. He supported ‘unconventional’ (in quotes because it’s highly subjective) ideas, career paths and personal plans.
- He also created a lot more time for himself and the family later on in life. He had a high degree of autonomy in terms of how he spent his day, within and sometimes despite all the constraints placed by the economic, legislative, social and cultural bounds we are all expected to live within.
When I happened to get into college, I entered an ambitious person who attributed both these things to entrepreneurship. And so, I took up entrepreneurship as my mission, wanting to do something 10x than what my parents did.
- I deliberately took up different roles at the cost of increased salary, promotions, etc. to become a more well-rounded person when I eventually founded my own company.
- I devoured books on business, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in the hopes of learning from other people and maximising my learning within a given period of time.
- I also quit my job in 2019 to start a company with some talented friends on an idea we thought we had researched a fair bit about.
Cut to 2020, and I have folded my startup attempt, took a new job in a role which I thought will help me do a startup better the next time, and the pandemic breaks out.
I have seen many people’s outlook towards life change significantly after the pandemic. It was a similar experience for me.
Seeing young-ish people pass away when they were nowhere close to the end of their life, I learned two things. The first was this: that no matter whether I knew them personally or professionally, the memories that remained were always moments of personal connection, spending quality time together, or bonding over a common interest or goal.
The widespread display of mortality was also a reminder of the impermanence of our so-called achievements. One might have built a huge company in their lifetime, and their legacy might live on, but who cares about them but their most immediate family and friends?
I also saw many of my friends having to change, pause or sometimes abandon their life plans in the wake of the pandemic. People in the middle of an international relocation could not go ahead. Some had to move back to their hometown to take care of their family after a personal loss. Many others struggled, and some continue to, with aftereffects of Covid.
I asked myself that if I knew my death was coming, will I be happy with the time I have spent so far? What will I continue to do? What will I want to change?
It was a conversation with a friend, who I also credit with a lot of my other epiphanies, who made me realise that my mission in life was not the only way to get what I wanted in life. In fact, statistically speaking, it may not even be the right choice. Don’t get me wrong; I still wanted many of the good things from being a successful entrepreneur, but I realised my North Star metric was flawed.
Since then, my mission in my life has been to increase my autonomy in life. I might still start a company at some point, but I have realised that that is not the only way to more autonomy. It could also mean finding a ‘good enough job‘ that works for my life: my financial goals, my learning goals, my life requirements.
My mission is life to just be myself for as long as I can, within the constraints placed by the economic, legislative, social and cultural bounds we are all expected to live within.
Utkarsh's Blog 