Money and Self Actualization

I belong to this bunch of 20 something’s who have passed out of premier B and when I say this I don’t feel ashamed to admit that we belong to another species of living beings. We toiled to get into one of these schools and then harboured aspirations to make lots of money (at least that holds true for most of us). After trying to put up with all that we could to get our dream jobs something has changed. A rich investment banker wants to do something “meaningful” with his life. The marketer wants to take his chances of rather being an entrepreneur. The entrepreneur feels lost as he is not a part of the rat race any more. The commercial banker looks forward only to the pay day and wishes something could change sometimes even unable to figure what. It is probably only this lot of people that seems to be so dissatisfied with what they are doing. I wonder what makes us so unhappy anyway?
The drivers I believe in each of these cases is the same of being the desire to earn money and yet derive meaning out of life or rather have the life that we always wanted to with all the money. I can’t think of any occupation that gives not one but both but. I only know that we can move up the Maslow’s hierarchy and the first and the last level are far apart. However I always wish I could have the two together. So it is not money vs meaning but more like money and meaning!! How I wish....

Happy New Year !

This is my first post of the year and I do not know what is so happy about this year. Recession has hit US and several major economies of the world, stock markets have under gone value erosion and auto companies are the in the process of being bailed out one after the other. Yet we wish each other in the hope that things would get better in the forthcoming year. Markets would bounce back and India would grow and there would be no more terror attacks and so on and so forth. I guess this satiates one of my very dear friend’s query “So what is so happy about this year ? ”. But this time around another friend asked me “What is new about this one?”. I could not really come up with an answer but as I thought about it I realized I had no answer. At the end of the year we would know about how this year was different from the previous one. So it is a mere wish.
Although I am extremely cynical about quite a few things I am an optimist when it comes to this one. So even though my new year’s eve was extremely uneventful I am hopeful of a happy and pleasant 2009. I wrote a post last year on new year’s eve about things I enjoyed on 31Dec. This time around I did nothing but hunt houses, go to work, attend a colleague’s son’s birthday and was so exhausted at the end of the day that dozed off before 12. Since my new year’s eve was mundane this post is dedicated to new year’s resolutions. We make so many of them ever year and as they say resolutions are meant to be broken, we break them too. This year I have decided to write them down so that I know where I am at the end of the next year.

1) Fitness
Have still not gotten around to exercising and getting fitter and though I started Yoga last year and as of now the status quo is that I have not exercised at all in the last few months. Try to reduce my binge for potato wafers and I really really hope I can stick to this one. Coming to think of it I alone could be contributing to a major portion of Lay’s revenues. A healthier life style could so me some good.

2) Trip alone
This has been something that I have always wanted to do for years now so this time around I hope I can go to Shillong and treat myself with the sights and sounds of east India.

3) Sleep less
With the hours that I spend sleeping these days I desperately want to stick to this resolution. Could seriously use the time for a bunch of other things.

I never really even tried making an attempt to do much about the above listed points but there are a bunch of things that I always resolve to do ever year and succeeded to an extent coz I at least make an attempt to take action. So I hope I make more attempts and hope this year is brighter and better than the last one !

Man! I feel like a Woman!!!

I was asked by a friend last night during a very casual conversation about what was new in my life and though I was quite eager to explain all the topsy turvy events of last week I couldn’t crib about something which I newly discovered about my own self. I suddenly felt very feminine!! This was after over 2 months of incessant shopping for something or the other and a comment by a friend who I met after almost a year.
Post campus life, I suddenly realize that it has become vital to look prim all the time something that I am so not used to. It is for this reason that I would have loved to be a boy. You walk around with a pair of blue jeans and a black/white T shirt and your done. No one objects even if you don around the same attire to a sat night party and a wedding. KISS works here the best! Unfortunately for the female species things are as diametrical as they could probably get. There is a party dress and a wedding dress and a casual dress and a cocktail dress and the list goes on and on. Separate attire to suit every occasion. No wonder women are always accused of shopping. First you buy the dresses then you buy accessories to match that and sometimes his quest runs over days because the best of a bag or a shoe or a belt would each be available in different markets. Not to forget the ohh so important jewels to match the outfit. Now most females enjoy this experience but with my very first time at all this jing bang I realize it is nothing but exhausting. How I wish it could be as uncomplicated as buying books :(
As I feel remorseful of the situation I also realize that there is no way out of it. It is a tacit rule that females are supposed to be prim and perfect all the time. All the leather matches and the hair are neatly tied and the hands and the legs and the nails are all in perfect shape. Talk about unnerving situations one would face and this definitely goes down as one. As recall my campus days, try to get rid of my sloppy dressing and try to fit into the prim corporate culture groove can’t help but hum Shania Twain’s number over and over again. Man! I suddenly so feel like a Woman!!!
PS. Thanks to a dear friend for encouraging to post more trash in the existing mélange..

Private celebrities

It has been long that I posted something but now that the entire b school jing bang is done I have had sometime to get back to be doing my regular rambling :P The idea to write this post comes from a TV show. It just so happened that in all this spare time I was randomly channel surfing and came to a halt when there was some discussion happening about the pros and cons of social networking. It got me thinking about the time when I first logged in on Orkut. It was more than 4 years back and I remember being sent an invite only to realize that none of my friends knew about the concept except the one who sent me the invite!!! I wondered then as to where the social aspect comes from. Well the sho sha grew and now almost everyone I know has a profile on this forum. I even bumped into friends from class 2 who were not in touch all this while.

So the idea that lingered along after this 10 min thingie that I watched on television was not about the pros and cons but the changes these sites have witnessed. It seems as if there has been a sudden desire to express oneself to the world at large or probably the desire was present but it has just been given a platform. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that a classmate gets bumps when his female friend changes her relationship status or the fact that the people upload the party pics from the previous nite. The desire to tell the world at large...

I logged into Orkut today only to realize that one can add applications and we know who is aping facebook. One of the conclusions that I came to was the fact that these platforms probably try to make a celebrity out of all of us which we probably already crave to be and that is why the popularity apart from the obvious networking aspect. So everything from what I read, listen to and how I party is all up there for everyone to witness. How I wish I learnt OB a little better I could have sure come up with some theory to back that up. So while I try to reproach all this innovation and demean the cow and sheep throwing, I am still pondering about Rajat Kapur’s question: Where does this all lead to?