the90skidjournal-blog

[the90skidjournal-blog]

Always.

[the90skidjournal-blog]

Dogmas Of Following Your Passion

As a child while growing up, I came across these few mindsets or different sets of principles laid down by the society which measures an individual’s life. And it’s really intriguing how we all are influenced by others literally from day one.

I came across the first mindset when I was In school, which was very simple and absolutely straight forward i.e If Our Grade Game Is Not Strong, We Are Fucked! And guess what? Not just for school, We Are Fucked Up For Life!

Why?

Because if we failed to bring up our “A” game in School, we will fail to get into some prestigious college, if we failed to get into some prestigious college, we will fail to get a prestigious degree, if we failed to get a prestigious degree, we will fail to get a prestigious security which is widely known as Job. And when we fail to get that prestigious job, We Fail In Life!

And therefore when I was a child, and when I was getting influenced by this mindset, the fear of being a failure started haunting me.

Because when you don’t live up to the expectations or the principles laid down by the society and when you are not familiar with those 2 magical words “Fuck Society” all you can see is eyes filled with judgments all around you.

Anyway… This is probably one of the most ludicrous mindsets i have ever come across, where failing is projected as a weakness of an individual instead of an opportunity to learn.

When the first mindset boomeranged, the second mindset came to existence, where people started Sugar-Coating Our Failures.

I.e proposing concepts like,

“It doesn’t matter if you placed 1st, 2nd or last, what more important is you participated. You were already a winner, when you became the participant.”

Or

If any of your ideas got rejected, it’s not because your idea sucked, it’s because they just don’t get you.

It’s nothing but a fuck load of crap!

I mean what are you even trying to convince? If the individual was not good enough or sucked at what he or she was doing, why not just tell that to him or her?

I mean how wise it is to keep a person in a bubble, which will burst eventually and will have its own serious consequences.

With these two mindsets, it all boils down to “giving up on trying”.

The reason can be either we are just too scared to try or maybe we just think that we are just too good for the opportunity.

Eventually time changed, social media broke all the barriers of communication and expression and a whole big chunk of population got exposed to the mindset of “Follow Your Passion”

Ideally we should not consider it as a mindset or a dogma, because when you do what makes you happy it’s not a certain set of rules which you are following. When you do something that makes you happy, it represents your life, and hence it should be considered as your Lifestyle instead of Dogma.

Then what is it, that makes me feel that it’s just a another set of rules laid down by society?

It is, I think because most of us had and have misinterpreted the term Passion. We have confused two different terms with each other, i.e What I like? And What I am passionate about?

We throw the word Passion daily like a man throws peanuts in front of doves. It’s not fucking that simple.

“I am soooo passionate about movies,I feel acting runs in my veins.I think I am born to act” — A wannabe actor probably after watching movies like 3 idiots or Tamasha (Love the movies) with no acting experience, with no rejections on the list, without even a dime of struggle.

NO!

You fucking like to watch movies, you have no clue about acting, because you don’t know the process and the struggle behind it and you actually don’t even want to know it, because you are just in love with the concept of Stardom. You are just fucking delusional.

We like a lot of things, but not everything we like is our passion.

In most of the movies based on these lines, the protagonist is always half way home, because he or she has already figured his or her shit out.

It’s the later journey which we see most of the time. We don’t see the struggle of finding the passion, and that’s where lot of us misinterpret passion with what we just feel good about or something that we use as a escape from reality.

We believe, what we want to believe, we listen, what we want to listen. It’s always as per our comfort.

And most of the time when we talk about following passion, dream jobs etc. we generalize it with talking about art or travel or sport etc. And intentionally or unintentionally throw fields like banking, economics, tax, debt etc out of it.

Why?

People fucking rub their asses off to be their, and it’s not always forced, it can be a choice, it can be someone’s passion. It’s just not projected “Cool” that’s the only difference.

And that’s why it makes me feel that we are treating Passion as a dogma instead of lifestyle. Because there are many of us who are doing it because it’s the “New Cool” because we want a new story to upload on Instagram, because we want approval from others. Not because it’s something we want to do.

So what’s the conclusion?

It’s actually a mix of all mindsets above.

We have to recognize our passion. If we want to do that, we have to try everything we think is our passion, so that we can understand if it’s just a bubble that we are living in or if we really are on to something. We should be ready to get a frank and real piece of feedback and not the sugar coated one. And we have to fall in love with the failures.

Trial and Error! I think we have to stick with this Mantra more than anything else.

And…..that’s pretty much it.

Mark Manson sums it all up beautifully in his book ‘Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck’

“A more interesting question, a question perhaps you’ve never considered before, is what pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.”

[the90skidjournal-blog]

Konkan Kada — A Marvel In The Heart Of Sahyadri

I don’t put myself in the category of “Adventurer” or if I have to use even more cheesy word “Wanderlust”, but yeah, I do enjoy trekking, travelling, whenever I get a chance to do so.

Travelling really does transport you to different zone altogether, and sometimes, if you are lucky enough, it leaves you with experiences to cherish. So I am always keen to pick up my backpack whenever I get the opportunity.

On my very first trek itself, I had heard one of my fellow trekker going all gaga about Harishchandra Gad and Konkan Kada. And since that day, Konkan Kada was on my wish list, and last weekend was the day when I put a check mark on it.

Konkan Kada! It is actually really difficult or rather impossible to describe the magnitude of it’s exquisiteness. A photograph can secure the moment, but I doubt if it can actually convey the contentment which we felt when we were sitting there literally on the edge. It is an experience which can only be experienced.

Although, the state of contentment is the end result of adversity.

It involves sweat, hell lot of water, soreness, a lot of fucks, a lot of “Why on earth did i even bother to come out of my cosy fucking bed?” And on some special occasions a drop of 9 committed co-trekkers out of 12

Yeah!

And when you realize 9 out of 12 of your fellow trekkers have bailed on you, your morale on the day before the trek is skyrocketing. *Sarcasm*

But as they say, “Trek plan simply cannot be cancelled.”

And then, there were three. We managed to defeat the object which has massive gravity in the morning i.e bed and caught a 4:24 AM Khopoli Train from CSMT (Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus)

One thing I love about trekking is, it’s direct correspondence with public transport. Of course you can hire a private car and have a chilling conveyance with your buddies, it has it’s own kick. But public transport has it’s own rawness. Rawness of people living in raw world with raw experiences, raw perspectives, a contrast to our safeguarded world.

If you are lucky enough a 5 min conversation with a stranger in a local train or a local bus can actually bless you with a whole new perspective to look at things in life.

So….. After catching a local train at an ungodly hour, it’s an hour trip to Kalyan and then a trip of 2–2 1/2 hours from Kalyan to Khubi Phata via ST. A roller coaster ride towards Malshej Ghat with lots of lots of turns which were only felt by us as we were mastering the art of napping.

One of the best nap I ever had.

And we reached Khubi Phata by 9:00 AM

And still we had 4–5 Km to cover before we reach the base village- Khireshwar. You can test your luck with local villagers’ cars as an alternative to reach base village otherwise be ready for long walk.

And finally we reached the base village, had our breakfast and geared ourselves up for Tolar Khind which is the route towards Harishchandra Gad, with “Eye Of The Tiger” in the background. Well…. it sounded much better in my head.

Harishchandra Gad! A little about this marvel.

Harishchandra Gad is a fort in the Ahmednagar district of India. It’s a very ancient fort. Various Indian Ancient Scriptures Matsya Purana, Agni Puranaand Skanda Purana have references of the fort. It is said that The Great Sage Changdev who created Tatvasaar used to meditate on fort in 14th Century. Harishchandragad was captured by the Marathas in 1747 from the Moguls. The fort is blessed with incredible sculpted caves and temples and of course the main attraction Konkan Kada.

After our breakfast it was all about 3–3 1/2 hours of hearing your breathing, feeling your elevated pulse, letting your sweat merge with red soil of rugged nature, falling on the rocks, bearing the scars, letting your muscles go stiff and sore, and enjoying lime water on occasions.

As they say, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. And I must say, when you come across a stall with guy selling lime water on it in the middle of the trek, its not lime water that he is selling it’s actually nectar.

The trek sure is physically demanding, but thankfully with constant arrow marks made on rocks saves a lot of time and energy. And sometimes if you are lucky enough you can be accompanied by a guide like Moti. Which is even better.

When we reached the top, the first thing which we noticed was Harichandreshwar Temple. A beautiful piece of architecture right in the heart of the fort.

We stretched ourselves up a little inside the temple. The contentment which we experienced inside the temple is indescribable. We absorbed that art as much as we could and we left the beautiful architecture for another one. Kedar Ling.

This is exactly how it is there in the photograph. The water around the Shivling is stone cold and 3 out of 4 pillars around the Shivling are shattered and only one pillar is still intact. As per the myth, the 4 pillars represent 4 Yugas (Era) Satyayuga, Tretayuga, Dwaparyuga and Kaliyuga. Every time when an era comes to an end the pillar representing that particular era gets shattered. The last pillar representing the current era i.e Kaliyuga will get shattered when this era, Kaliyuga, will come to an end. Spooky right?

After seeing various caves around the fort we finally set ourselves up for the main reason for which we bared all that physical exhaustion, Konkan Kada!

After a 25–30 min of walk from Harichandreshwar Temple, we reached the marvel. And as it was expected we were stunned!

A stunning vertical cliff facing west and looking down upon the Konkan. The cliff is not just vertical it’s an overhang. Hence it literally looks like a Cobra’s Hood if one sees it from its front.

After all the photo sessions for social media, we just sat there in silence and watched the sun dissolving in that orange blue sky, while wind constantly singing it’s own song in our ears.

That larger than life miracle of nature made me realise, how our existence is equivalent to a particle in this beautiful and humongous mess of nature. I just wanted the time to stop there and there itself. It was all about soaking up that moment. It was exactly like what Rumi said,

“The Moment Is All There Is.”

One of the things about trekking which I find fascinating is, how we can actually relate it with life.

I mean isn’t it all about conquering our own mountains so that we can experience the beautiful peak of life?