I grew up in a high-rise apartment in Kolkata. We had multiple windows facing west. This meant that most fall evenings, I'd be able to see beautiful sunsets out of my window. I remember one such evening distinctly. I was a teenager looking out and enjoying the gorgeous view. When a small voice inside my head said, "you'll have time enough to watch these sunsets later, go back to studying for your engineering entrance tests". I did as the voice told me. I failed that engineering test, multiple times. Today, a couple of decades later, I remain just as driven as ever. Relentlessly working, studying, experimenting, and pushing my self. And my failure rate has remained just as alarmingly high as ever. E.g., after working in the industry for 15 years, I applied to the Ph.D program at the University of Washington (yep, failed to get in), tried my hand at doing my own startup (totally blew it), and the list goes on.
Since that beautiful evening ages ago, I have moved multiple times - houses, cities, states, countries, and even continents. But as chance would have it, I never stayed in a place that had a view of the sunset. The "later" that I had promised myself never came. This makes me question my life choices. This makes me question, should I just stop? Should I just watch the sunset?
Photo by Damir Spanic on Unsplash