Nothing Is Better Than Something…. 🤓

When I was grappling with science in my intermediate, on the verge of quitting, I was advised to opt for commerce… If I had made up my mind not to “become” an engineer or doctor. “Something is better than nothing!!”

When I turned into a serial entrepreneur pursuing series of interests one after the other, and when they really didn’t take off as expected, today as I know it as the resultant of the want of passionate persistence, I was advised to seek a regular paying job. Something is better than nothing.

In my two plus decades of L&D Life, I have met thousands and thousands of bright minds, who are passionate about singing, dancing, writing, acting, photography, painting… living … who shunned their passion, buried it in truckloads of pecuniary wisdom, flooded with abundance of advice: Something is better than nothing. Most of my sales colleagues, (Peace Be Upon Their Hallowed Souls 🤓) at all levels, have almost always been a product of some accidental rerouting of their life and landed themselves as reluctant sales professionals. And that I daresay holds true to almost 90+% of the corporate role holders in this corporate world. All products of Something is better than nothing….

I dread to imagine the unseen fiduciary loss of these organizations saddled with human capital who were products of something is better than nothing, rather than passionate pursuits of the arena that they were tasked with producing results in. Old Vedic wisdom said that if the cook of the house were to cook with absent mindedness or any other distressful emotion of either anger, sorrow, hatred etc., then the essence of such negativity percolates on the hapless eaters demeanour. If I were to stretch the scope of this ancient wisdom, then the cumulative resultant of the tasks performed by unwilling, apathetic zombies imprisoned in their roles culminating from their monetary need rather than their passion, the massive onslaught of average work that the recipient organization unseeingly suffers is mind-numbing to even fathom. Thus, never reaching its zeniths of possibilities, ever… relegated to average obscurity of ‘also existed’ category.

And this “also existed category” of humanoids in its billions of numbers is the root cause of the air of depreciating possibilities that the planet suffers from. While we rejoice the random acts of progress made by mankind over the thousands of years of its recorded history, what we fail to evaluate is that the denominator was absolutely nothing to which we are comparing the progress with. If we were to denominatorize the possibilities of the products of passionate pursuits of human beings, then the limitless scope of the same would really stun us with the similar effect that one may feel when they were to stare at the sun with their naked eyes.

Something is better than nothing empowers us to pursue any channel of alternative to our original passion, since our perceived survival instincts get the better of us. Perhaps that is the conspiratorial flaw of the survival program of the celestial programmers in delaying the realization of the true potential of the denizens of this planet. Perhaps that is the conspiracy of the Gods in ensuring that we don’t become one of them. As all the religions worth their existence scream out that we were created as clones of the almighty in form and we ensured our systemic disintegration over the time zones through our mediocrity mindset and pursuits of something is better than nothing.

Just for a moment imagine… what would happen if we were to pursue education with the intent of knowledge acquisition and not rote rigmaroles of scoring cent percentiles in the rapacious pursuit of becoming a campus recruitment statistic. We acquire ‘education’ with an intent to earn. Better the ‘education’ better the earning potential. Did I hear you ask learning? Well. I bet you must be joking. Who buys education to ever acquire knowledge?

And just for a divine moment imagine, if we were to opt for nothing, instead of settling for something, in our pursuit of passion. That we were unwilling to sacrifice our dreams and happiness for the sake of survival and security. That we were to continue chasing our craving for that which gave us goosebumps in its pursuit and make us moony eyed to even imagine its smidgeon achievement. That which triggered the release of millions of wild butterflies in our stomachs when we imagined treading the path of what made us happy and gleeful. How many of us get up every morning with this feeling of electrifying excitement and look forward to the day of our chores as passionately and eagerly as the elusive sighting of your first love during your sophomore years. If you don’t… You have your answer.

When you settle for “nothing”, snubbing the pursuit of the substitute “something”, then you devote your entire focus and energy on that one thing that you want. You employ all your energies and channel every single iota of strength in the sinews of your brain to make your dream a reality. You look for ways and means, while you have the luxury of time, to chase the objects of your passion and aspirations. You are not bogged down by the mundane chores of mediocrity shoved at you by someone you care two hoots about. You are the owner of your dreams and you are the driver of the vehicle of your passionate pursuit. You create plans, roadmaps, strategies to achieve what you have always wanted and not get imprisoned for decades, proving your worthlessness in the servitude of tasks that never were your passion in the first place. The pursuit itself adds meaning to your life, happy in the thought that you are chasing what you love. The excitement is always in the journey and not really in the termination of the journey at its destination. Destinations keep evolving … heralding many instalments of journeys that continue to give a new lease of life to every atom of your body and soul and keeps you truly alive. And if a collective humanity were to chase its passion, then the collective possibility of this planet would have perhaps surpassed the imaginations of its creators, as they always suspected, while this program was being finalized.

And thus, the bug was planted in the software of life. Something is better than nothing.

If you want to chase true happiness, give life back to your heartbeats, return the glow of existence to your glassy eyes and defog the potential of your intellect, then, my friends, you need to rather settle for nothing …. Nothing but life at your terms… Nothing but your passionate best…. Best of your primal possibilities of magnificence… crack the code… subdue the urge to merely exist and shun the warmth of the shades of the known… the dark alleys of the comforts of mere mediocre survival…

For no man or woman worth their salt who ever made history, no creator who ever advanced the human race, no billionaire who succeeded in his venture of passion, no superhero who thought that he can change the world and did, ever pursue the comfortable alternates of something while they nurtured their ardent ambitions…. For the pursuit of something is the curse that makes you a Midas of Mediocrity. If something is the only option while you hibernate in your pupa, then opt for nothing rather. And in the moments of nothingness, metamorphose your dream into reality. For only those succeeded in any extraordinary venture who single-mindedly chased their paths of passion without consigning themselves into the decades of the obscurity of mediocrity that the journey of something is for sure to relegate you to.

Nothing… Is Better Than Something.