Why Settle For Settlement?

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost (English poet, 1874-1963)

Imagine yourself ten years from now. What would be the things you would want to have? Perhaps a big apartment, an air conditioner, some good furniture and of course, a family of your own. From this angle the future seems to be perfect.

Now picture a different scenario. Ten years from now, you could be living in a cramped room, with only a table fan and a mattress and you could be unmarried.

Which of the above scenarios would you rather choose?

I bet you would choose the first one. But consider this- ten years from now, you are going to be about twenty-eight years old (if I am right about the demographic this blog caters to). At this age, would it be better for you to have everything in your life sorted out or would it be better to struggle for your dream? If you choose the latter, a lot of hardships are guaranteed, but when you are young and energetic, hardships are supposed to be part of your life. Why is it that we want to play it safe with all our life choices so that we are fully settled by the time we hit thirty years of age? Why do we want to be done with every experience and live like a sixty-five year old when we still have youthful zeal in us?

Well, the answer to these questions will be given differently by different people.

Most boys would say upon much pondering that when you are seventeen, you don't know what exactly you want to do with the rest of your life and so it is best to just take the path that has been taken a million times by others. This path is tried and tested and since the people who had taken it have turned out to have comfortable lives, this path is the obvious choice. Even if some boy has a strong dream, he may be scared to give up the luxuries of his upper-middle class life to follow it.

Girls would have a different answer which they may not express (thanks to the spread of pseudo-feminism). The truth is that even today girls have to chose between family and career. By the time she is thirty, she is expected to have a complete family of four. She has been taught to believe that it is not going to matter how successful she is until she has her own family. Its okay for her to be jobless, but not unmarried. Face it, people. Try being an Indian girl for a week and you will say that these observations of mine are correct. In such a situation, how can a girl pursue her dreams and take risks. And what's the point anyways if she is going to end up becoming somebody's wife?

But think about what Robert Frost said. He said that he took the road less travelled and that was what made all the difference. Whether this difference was positive or negative has been left for the reader to decide, but what matters is that there is a difference. Someone who chooses the road less travelled chooses to live with a difference. He/she chooses to live the life of his/her choice, even if this path has been described by Robert Frost as follows- '...... as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear.......'

Today, make your choice, take your route, carve your niche and face the hardships that come along the way. Chances are that one day you will saying with a relieved sigh that you took the road less travelled by and that was what made all the difference.