The Bucket List

May 2009. The month my CAT journey came to an end. With all the elation, the exhilharation and the feeling of being over the moon, came the trepidation too: will I get a finance job?Will I get an I-bank job? So out of anxiety I shot off a scrap to a schoolday friend of mine. He was working at ATKearney after passing out of IIM Calcutta; Needless to say, he is one of the most brilliant people I have ever seen. I asked him if I would be able to get a finance job of my liking. He asked me a very simple question: Is finance what I really want to do?

Today, after three terms @ IIM, I realise the importance of his words: Is this what I really want to do? Forget marketing, finance, strategy, operations, what exactly do I want to achieve? Or for that matter, what exactly does anyone want to achieve?I will get a good job. Then what? I will rise in the ranks. Then what? I will become a CEO or open my own firm and have my own merc, condo in Dubai and farmhouse at Lonavala. But then what? Is this really an end? Is this what will give worth to life? To have millions in my bank account yet have a life full of tension and stress, to have a condo but away from the love of my wife and children, to have a indoor heated swimming pool yet not able to swim in it as your life has been ravaged by hypertension?

Trust me, I am not saying that being a manager is not worth it.A manager, an entrepreneur has got a very important role to play in the society. But how many graduates from B-school actually follow their heart? How many MBA graduates(including IIM graduates) actually know what they want to do in life? Ask them and you would see that 90% of them want to join I-bank, diligently give CFA yet enrol for Marketing research workshops all the same. People here run after brands, after packages, after gilded names like investment banker or consultant, but for the same people I would ask one question: Would they have joined airtel in 2000? Or Reliance in the 70s? Today these are big names, but no one would have thought of joining them when they were not so big, when they were struggling. So the truth is, we run after names. We cant see beyond the gilded names because we are too busy fulfilling someone else's dream. Not ours.Ask any guy what field he is interested in and he will reply-lets see. Lets see at the age of 28??I mean, at what age then will your goals should become clear? When you have crossed 35 and look back with regret at the opportunities that you have missed?

Well, I am not saying that people are to blame. After all, they were stuck in jobs that they hated, they wanted to break the glass ceiling, they wanted to add extra dimension to their careers, they wanted higher money, more power-the reasons for doing MBA are endless. But to achieve these aims they compromise with so many things that they forget that what they are compromising are the very things that hold the key to their goals.They compromise with their freedom, with their free thinking, and they compromise to such an extent that they forget that they are mature adults who had been working as senior engineers, scientists and project managers even before they came here. They not only leave their identity behind but also forget that they ever had an identity. Amidst all this confusion they become scared, insecure about their future, start to behave as puppets of the system and they forget that more than the MBA system its their past, its what they are, its their abilities, their potential, their interests, hopes, aspirations, dreams, ideals, principles, their independence that determines their future.

We all have role models.We idolise Bill gates, Steve Jobs, Dhirubhai Ambani and the like. They had many great qualities: they were visionaries, immensely talented, but more than that they were free, independent minds: No system shackled them, they knew what they wanted from life, and they were never afraid to go for what they wanted in life. When we were kids we all had wishes.Some dreamy, some highly kiddish. I call that wish list " the bucket list". As we grew up we started modifying our wish lists for various reasons, appending them, deleting them, but how many of the wishes have we actually fulfilled in our lives?How many of such wishes do we ever hope to fulfill in our life? Should we go on editing the list as we go on compromising that we forget that list if the true mirror of what we actually are, what we can, and should be and try to live a life of mediocrity? And we call a life where we cannot fulfill the wishes dear to our heart, that we so badly wanted to do, a happy life?

Compromising ensures mediocrity:in the least case it makes you realise u r not what you are. Steve jobs once said: At the end of the day, when I look in the mirror i reflect on my day:Was it spent the way I wanted it to be? If the answer is no, then I realise that something must be done to change it. We need to see ourselves in such mirror also; coz all this forgetting and compromising is going to lead us to such a stage in our life where we look back and realise that we have not even been able to achieve what we wanted to do, what our passions were, our true interests were: The regret that accompanies it, trust me, is unbearable.Being yourself, following your dreams is the surefire way to success. Working to fulfil someone else's dream whether in an I-bank or Mckinsey isnt success; coz its not your dream.

So its high time we retrieved our bucket list and went through it; coz it will awaken our true self, and give us our self belief back.More importantly, the bucket list will help us live the life we always wanted to have, and do the things that we really want to do. Thats the main course of life; MBA, degrees, jobs, mercedes, condos are mere salad dressings.