My thoughts on baking.

I heard someone say recently that he is afraid of failure. And he made it sound like one of those answers we prepare for 'State three weaknesses' type questions for HR interviews - something that might be a negative on the surface, but might actually be a positive in spirit and substance.

From my own experience, and from lots of other persons' I have known, and one does come across a disproportionately high number if one studies/has studied at the 'premier' institutions of the country, I have come to believe that anyone who truly believes this is blinded by narcissism. There is an inherent assumption in the statement that you have been really successful in most of the things in your life, whatever success means, or at least have failed less than your lesser peers. Or that everyone else enjoys failure and looks forward to it. What it truly means, whatever truth means, is that you are just too hung up on living up to the commonly held notions of success; in fact, scared of not living up to people's expectations. And the higher you move up on this invisible ladder propped up by your eagerness to fulfill everyone's expectations, the more difficult it gets to let go. You have managed to convince yourself that living your life, doing things that you might actually want to do, and enjoying your work, is a set completely exclusive to the set that defines success. That not 'putting fight' is the same thing as stagnation or failure. That you are too much of a coward to even accept that you can't bear the idea of people not fawning over your superficial 'success'.

I don't exactly feel very confident about discussing what one should do with his work and how much fight one needs to put to 'succeed', and would probably never feel confident doing that for a long time with people who have been in touch with me over the last two-three years, but my faith in the notion of anything not being worth it if one has to force oneself to do it, whatever 'it' means, has, surprisingly enough, only got strengthened over these last few years.

Giving up is not as evil a thing as we make it out to be. Even giving up on life. And fighting, over and over again, is probably not as virtuous as we have been brought up to believe.

But even when you don't give up, and honestly this world would be so much worse if it weren't for the fighters amongst us, and even the worst of us give-up-ers do fight at some level, it is, frankly, very funny if you cite excuses like fear of failure to hide a much bigger issue. ‘Success’ and ‘failure’ are ascribed to certain things, almost always, based on what the majority believes. The majority, let’s accept it, isn’t exactly very intelligent. And if you, despite your supposed infinite brilliance, have been forced to kowtow to the majority’s notions, even when you yourself do not subscribe to them, I am not sure how successful you actually are.

This might sound like the much abused quote by some management guru (Shiv Khera, is it?) but one doesn’t necessarily need to do different things - leave everything and become an ascetic or choose a completely unconventional career - but one can at least try and do things differently from an average rich or professionally successful idiot who rues at the end of his 35-40 year stellar career that he didn’t enjoy life’s little pleasures when he could.

One can, most definitely, have the cake and eat it too.