A little bit of me

p.s. - i am republishing something i had posted long back and inadvertently deleted :). now a little updated

A liitle bit of me I have been looking at numerous places where they ask me to describe myself, and i find myself not being able to do the same. eventually i end up carping the same old stuff, stuff that 90 in a 100 would be using, something on the lines of " am still confused, am trying to find myself and such".
Now the very fact that i have been carping such stuff makes me think do i really do not know myself? Can it be possible that 22 years after i came into this world, i have no idea what i am, who i am, and questions of the sort? or is it that i am trying to hide myself behind a facade? does that then mean that i am scared to show myself to the rest, either because i fear the rest shall reject me or because they might harm me if they know what my real self is? whew.............that seems to be a really disturbing thought and would undoubedtly show me as suffering from a really serious case of self-deprecation.
However, coming from a science and engineering background ( though the latter is a little suspect), i have always believed, that in most critical situations the conclusion that is the simplest is generally overlooked, and only later does one realise that indeed it is the right conclusion. I shall make no mistake of that sort here. So let me simply dump the higly complicated analysis as of above, and think for a moment of a very simple reason, for my inability to describe myself. simply put difficulty in articulating in a concise form what i believe i am or worth or whatever.
Hmm that sounds pretty ok now. Now that i have solved the initial problem of why i am unable to answer such questions, let me see if i can now try and actually answer the same.
About me. Well to start with, i am in the 23rd year of my so far not very long life, having recently passed out in chemical engineering from a reputed instituion, and completed two years in the corporate world.

Life so far has been good. School, college, all have passed in a roller coaster of sorts. I have had my best times, my worst times ( which actually were not that bad, only they seemed so at that time), have learnt quite a few things and yet feel there is so much to know, have changed myself in many ways, even though inherently i still remain the same.............................a completely excitable, quick to temper, kid who is trying to grow into a man, and slowly but surely succeeding at it too.

I have a pretty large circle of freinds and yet when it comes to it, the number with whom i have a really close relationship are simply put countable on ones fingers. My buddies from school are perhaps the best. have 5 best freinds from school who have continued even after we passed out from school, went to different colleges and now working at different places. then there are another 5 -6 from college. Not that it really surprises me or makes me feel bad. at the end of the day, actually one gets to have only so many freinds. i mean look at it this way, there is also a limit to which one can expand ones horizons. plus i am really happy to have such a coterie of great buddies.

Yet there was a time, esp in college, when i used to really go out of my way when dealing with freinds. and what used to happen was that when my expectations were not fulfilled i used to get depressed. It really took me a long-long time to get over this kind of a mental makeup. But finally i did manage to do it. Thats one of my most important learnings from college. i could in fact write a book on the same. But i guess i wont do that here.
School and college have been very different playing and learning fields. Let me elaborate on the same.

I spent a great time in school. Was among the toppers in my class, pretty good in co-curricular, kind of a cyanosure of teachers eyes. All in all had a great time. Learnt quite a few things, though when it comes to the practical ways of life, there i did not learn much. Maybe its because we were so well protected from the outside world. We had our parents, our teachers and then our freinds whenever we needed them.
Perhaps the most important aspect of life in school was the element of innocence it carried. whatever we did, at the end of the day, there were no hidden agendas, nothing.
and then those golden days ended. and we came to college. that was the first time i went out of home and stayed alone. Thats when i can say the real lessons in life as a whole started for me. Perhaps the biggest lesson for me was how to become more and more flexible in ones approach to life. that was one thing my parents had always told me i lacked. here i did develop a lot of sense of flexibility.

Of Course, i also had some setbacks. Academically it was all the way down the ladder. i simply did not study in college. Got involved in emotional distractions and wasted a lot of time. Looking back, i almost yearn to go back and rectify this perhaps the biggest mistake of my life. This unnecessary emotional distractions was one hell of a bane for me. Cannot blame anyone else for the same. But yes i should never have done that. Anyways, as they there is always a rise after a fall. So at the end of the day, i learnt my lesson well, my academics though they suffered but i still go a decent grade and finally landed up with a good job in the corporate world.
College life indeed has taught me so many things. In fact there are so many things that i am still trying to inculcate into my life. Havent really succeeded but i hope to do so soon.

Its now been two full years in the corporate world. The learnings here have been basically more of a professional sort. The one thing that i have been learning more these days is how to handle your finances when you are your own manager and not your parents. ha ha ha ha.

Sometimes, when i look back, i feel pangs of nostalgia at the times spent. So many times do i wish i could go back and relive all those moments at school and college. so many times, have i wished to go back and change things. But then whats done is done. I guess my emotional quotient is a little too high for todays world. but then thats the way it is. maybe with a little more time, that will lower.

At the end of the day, i find myself asking myself, do i really feel i have anything to regret???? No, an emphatic no. I might introspect on past doings and misdoings, but thats all part of life is it not. Misdoings are for you to learn from and make sure you dont repeat, not to brood or regret upon.
Life goes on, like a song,
adios
Chaos