A lot of people ask me how to find the perfect vocation, perfect partner, perfect city or the perfect MBA for them. I am seldom sure that I hold any authority for solving or identifying any of these. I often pitch in with a version of a rather snarky disclaimer “Dude/Girl, I am someone who forgets their bath towel before entering the shower. Are you sure you want to ask me this?”
They politely insist in keeping up with human conventions. I comply in keeping up with other unwritten human conventions.
So here it goes – if you are indeed one of those many that struggle with understanding what’s ‘perfect’ for you, this might help. This largely won’t help people who don’t wake up with ‘existential angst’ (i.e. questions about job, partner, city, mba).
Perfection is largely an allegory. A mirage of sorts. You can reach perfection, but it’s a moving target. My MBA, my relationships, my friendships, my jobs have been perfect at times, but most of the times they have been somewhere there languishing on the spectrum.
Some days I wake up with blissful thoughts that I have the best job in the world or that I had the best partner in the world (post experiencing perfection) and somedays I wish to burn the world and retire on a beach with a book away from human civilization(experiencing damnation).
In effect, I see the world like a fucking sand timer, and you are made to try on different shoes in a room with a finite number of shoes. At the start each shoe either fits or it doesn’t. Soon enough, the shoes start wearing themselves out and you don’t know whether to repair them or discard them or move on to the new shoes?
All this while the fucking sand timer is discarding sand.
Finally, as the sand timer reaches 70-80 years (depending on where you live in the world), you are suddenly supposed to sound Gandalf-y and share how the shoe putting on process was on a podcast with Naval Ravikant. In the middle of all of this, there is a possibility that you might luck out and find a Weston, a shoe with a lifetime guarantee. Or your time might run out with multiple good runs with many good shoes.
Why does this happen?
Largely the shoe (a metaphor for a job, a relationship, a friendship – if you didn’t pick that up, you dumb you) is a finite entity with its own life. Rarely, does the average shoe last you for decades – most of the time the road taken/not taken keeps messing with this shoe. But this shoe leaves you with realizations, you realize you walk with a certain strut or that you are not a runner.
So life is largely about savouring this shoe trying on process and smiling and laughing when the shoe fits the best and crying and wailing when the shoe doesn’t.
So where the fuck is the advice in all this?
The only advice that I have is –
“Try infinite shoes as the timer runs out, when you find the shoe that fits, hold on to it for dear life and attempt to sustain that perfection, but keep repairing it when it feels slightly worn out. If it tears fully, it’s tough to put it together.”
Life feels to me about largely attempting infinite tries in a finite world.
Aditya Rane 