The Ghost of Stability

Throughout my life, it has been reiterated to me that being a part of the “in-group” was very important in order to have a good life. To obtain and maintain a community, I was taught that I must create a template version of myself that would be palatable to most people. Who I am, how I talk, the way I dress—we are taught to overcalculate our lives from the very beginning in order to further benefit ourselves as individuals; to understand the relationships we forge as alliances that serve some higher purpose—to see relationships as resources.

I have been on both ends of this dilemma, often finding myself looking for the potential value in anything I spend my time on as a means of somehow bettering my own life. At other times, I find myself in positions where my own ability as a resource is all I am defined by, and thus how I define myself. Both sides are the result of the same paradox: one in which an individual forgets that they themselves are their primary—and perhaps only truly reliable—resource for getting the job done.

I have spent countless hours pondering where exactly I fit as a puzzle piece, where my skills could be utilized most efficiently in service of some “greater goal,” completely silencing the parts of me that wanted to create something of their own. But everything feels so oversaturated. The way we dress, the way we talk, the jobs we want, the friends we want to impress—all products of a vision of life that strives for perfect balance, yet feels entirely unrealistic.

I think it is the imbalance with which each of us approaches the different aspects of our lives that makes us individuals. Whoever said you need to “wake up at 5 AM in order to become a billionaire” was probably not a billionaire. And if they were, think of it as just another person mistaking their luck for some inherent understanding with which only they were supposedly “blessed.” More broadly, letting go of the childlike whimsy of creating one’s life from scratch and instead adopting reference material by which to shape oneself has killed the potential of a thousand artists in exchange for producing one “great” C-suite executive.

Throughout my formative years of figuring out exactly who I was, the ghost of stability drove nearly every decision I made. Meanwhile, my creativity was crying out. For years, I resented not being able to “hone my creative talents” earlier in life, and I spent too much time convincing myself that people who follow their passions and find success in doing so must have been born to do it.

But just as we are encouraged to in any other professional pursuit, the only way to find success through one’s genuine passions is to try.

So I leave you with this: nobody is going to tell you exactly what you want. People have a tendency to project their own fantasies onto others—the pressure to follow your parents’ line of work, chase ultimate stability, pursue what is “recession-proof,” and ultimately end up in a mental recession of your own. But only you know what you truly want, and what you may be capable of if you are willing to take that first step.

Following the head alone is too robotic a way to live while chasing ultimate contentment, for it is the heart that knows how to pursue love.

- Anurag Ghosh