The arc of life

I lost my father when I was 30, my mother when I was 40. I am too scared to turn 50.

While my father's death broke me and made me question everything, my mother's death made me question my own mortality. I had this sudden realization that considering the fact that both my parents didn't live past 65 and I was on my early 40s, if genetics had their say, then I was done with 2/3rds of my life already.

I have this belief, whether rational or not, that I will not live much past 65. It is a gut-punch when you realize that you have lived longer than you have left to live. When the road ahead is much shorter than what you see in the rear-view mirror. You wonder where you were at the half way point, at the 1/3rd point. How did you not realize that you have already lived most of your life. That you may have a mere 20-25 years to live.

As the years pile on and the medicine cabinet gets a new addition every couple or years, I realize that my genetics are stronger than my will to defeat them with better living. Are all those hours of post-exercise muscle pain worth it? Was the salad diet a worthy pay off in the end? Will I have the same number of years if I become a slob. Do I get a few more years if I eat healthier and work out even more? Where is the payoff?

Every flutter in the heart, every muscle pain makes me realize that my best years are probably behind me. I read somewhere that "we are all put on this earth to do a specific set of things. Right now, I am so far behind that I will never die". I always thought I had such a long list of books to read that I don't have the luxury to die right now but these days, I feel myself subconsciously prioritizing what I have left to do. I am quick to drop anything that doesn't interest me. I don't want to lose out on my to-read/to-watch pile when the time comes. My OCD mind wouldn't want something left midway. I want to use every waking hour tying up the lose ends.

 

There was this joke doing the rounds around the time the world was supposed to end on the basis of the Mayan calendar - no way is the world going to end in X days, my yogurt has an expiration date beyond that. These days, when I buy yogurt, I always think back to that joke and wonder if the yogurt I buy now is the one that has an expiration date longer than mine.

When I grow up, I wanne be

The other day, a bunch of us got together and started this silly game of "what did you want to be when you grow up". The responses all around were fairly predictable - pilot, scientist, astronaut etc etc.

While I was waiting for my turn, I tried hard to think about what I did want to be when I grew up but kept drawing a blank. The inevitable happened. They asked and I said...nothing. I had no ambition of being any specific profession after growing up. The usual banter followed with most of the people assuming that I was being haughty and just trying to stand out by not naming a profession. Some assumed I was being a jerk, some thought I was just unimaginative, others thought it must have been something weird that I didn't want to call out.

It was a silly game but it got me thinking. Did I really not have any ambition growing up? For the longest time, I remember that my only thought growing up was to be filthy rich. It is not like I grew up dirt poor or among very rich friends but all I remember thinking was that I just want to make a lot of money when I grow up. I saw my father being worried about money for most his life though he never told us about this. Somewhere, deep down, I thought if I just have a lot of money by any means necessary, all the troubles will go away. This is of course, not a profession and not something you mention in a friends group specially if you are not filthy rich already.

I am an engineer by education but I don't think I even wanted to be one till the day I got an admission into an engineering college. I didn't think too hard about leaving my home country till I did. I sat for an MBA admissions test and cracked one of the hardest exams in my home country (didn't clear the interview though) but didn't even know what MBA implied even when I went for the interview.

Sometimes I think I am just like an old rotten leaf that a tree shed into a fast flowing river. The leaf has no will of it's own, it just goes where the river takes it. I have been accused of being "passive" and "soft" more times than I can count. It angers me but, somehow, that never hurts. What did hurt once was when my sister told me that her son was like me in the way that he "just does the minimum to do what's good enough and never realizes his true potential". Am I really like that? Do I really have more potential that I think I do? Am I just plain lazy? I have often wondered what qualities people see in me? I am not in the least humble but do I underestimate myself or do I put a facade for people?

As to my "ambition", I did start out trying to be rich but then, life happened. Rather, death happened. Two or them. My father went first and it broke me in more ways than I thought possible. He saw and heard of me living a hard life and passed away a couple of months after I bought my first house. I wanted nothing more than to have him come and see my house. He never could. Ten years later, my mother left as well and suddenly money, or the accumulation of it, made no sense at all. 

Life goes on...I have some money. If rest of my life takes the expected course, I will have more. Will I have enough? Or is the right question to ask here is that will I have enough that my kids will, one day, be able to name what they wanted to be growing up and not be embarrassed that the only thing they can think of is that they just wanted more money.