Growing up

I had a happy and almost completely protected childhood and thus, leaving home for higher studies (Engg. and then the MBA) and more importantly- working in the corporate world have all been very different experiences from my childhood. I hope to thus highlight the major ways one is considered a 'grownup' and the actual ways in which one can act more mature and whether one should make an effort to grow up at all in the first place.

Growing up destroyed a lot of the dreams I had as a child but helped me build (possibly) much better ones; or more realistic ones, at the very least. My idea of adulthood (as an adolescent) had me working in a high flying corporate job  getting paid handsomely and having a hot wife in a huge bungalow and chilling during weekends. The problem with these kinds of dreams is that almost everyone dreams the same. And, in a world with limited opportunity and resource, you have to either intimidate/dominate others, be extremely skilled at something, or just get lucky/use unfair means to achieve this. Naturally, the most attractive option is to be extremely skilled at something. While it would be nice to have 'God-given' talent that makes you play football like Messi or compose music like Mozart, not all of us have that and not all of us have practised enough to know whether we do actually have (I have this weird feeling I might've been really good at football :P). Thankfully, as I've written before, talent is not the only deciding factor even in highly technical field and so practice can help you get a long way ahead.  Practice is thus the mantra for someone who wants to succeed without leading/dominating others to make them do things you feel would make money.

Now, leadership is indeed a skill of its own- but a skill that requires a certain attitude and certain moral values in addition to the skills. And, structural leadership and power arising out of position do not excite me at all- I like leading with soft power and leading by example; and not because others are forced to listen to what I say. The value of leadership, historically, has continually gone up in the world in my opinion and it is the only skill which will probably continue to grow in importance. The reason for this is the increased productivity arising out of division of labour (thus requiring large organisations) and the basic human need to connect and relate to good leaders, in order to feel that their work (no matter how boring) has a purpose. Leaders sometimes have to be harsh- since fairness (and honesty) is the most important trait for a leader

Coming back to the point, the biggest difference I see in adults as compared to adolescents is that they're self-satisfied and willingly ignorant (you could call it confidence but there's a thin line between both). If a 15-20 year old kid is told that they're not good at something and repeatedly so by a handful of people, it is very likely that he will either become depressed or change himself to avoid criticism. This is particularly relevant in changing environments, which can be due to several reasons including growing up itself (different schools, grades etc) or due to changing houses or even friends circles. The adolescent (15-20 yr old) doesn't yet know what he is good or what he should be good at. This lack of self satisfaction leads to growth and self-improvement. This comes at quite a big cost though- the cost of uncertainty about yourself and what you want to do or what you should be good at or even the things you should be proud of. Highly volatile people often end up being too depressed to do anything, since there are a 100 different points of view for everything and many of them may be conflicting. For instance, a person who wants to be 'cool' in a group of studious kids and in a group of movie lovers and in a group of football lovers as well, may find it difficult to balance time between the three and simultaneously be the best football pundit, nerd and movie critic. He should either reduce his interests and focus on something (since his time is limited) or reduce his expectation of being the best at each and everything. To be more specific, there are three things that limit a person from doing everything he thinks is cool - 1) There is limited time and you cannot expect to spend enough on each thing to be good at everything 2) It takes a huge emotional toll to be continuously open to different points of view and 3) Being too 'open' is a thing. If you don't believe in certain values yourself, it is difficult to have the conviction to do things (or even live life) at all. Certain decisions need to be taken first (from instinct) and thought about later.

However, if you can live through the pains of having an open heart, it will let you grow wildly as a person. Both your soul (knowledge) and body (physical skills) will grow far more than those of closed people. For instance, a person who feels belittled in front of others with well built bodies (and thus starts working out), feels dumb in front of finance geniuses (and thus starts reading)  and feels bad that he doesnt watch enough movies or play enough sports to be cool - will end up doing all these things and eventually become reasonably good at all these things. And since success begets even more success, learning often becomes easier later on since others also understand how capable/willing you are at learning new things.

Coming back to the self-satisfaction- This is not exactly confidence. From my experience, even adults are mostly clueless as to what they want to do- and given enough provocation, they will show the lack of confidence they have in themselves. Ignorant self-satisfaction on the other hand, is a good substitute which says "I'm a  pretty awesome person. I don't ave enough knowledge to be sure, but I don't care". It may not even define what 'being the best' includes, but it still works for a lot of people. It works because there are also others who are actually (in relative terms) a lot more confident about what they do and have a broader perspective about themselves and about life. Confidence on the other hand is having an awareness of what you know and what you do not know, combined with the wisdom of things you should be knowing and the things you're okay with not knowing. Now, there's a lot of subjectivity here and hence no one can have perfectly confident selves and perfect knowledge of what they know and don't- however, one can always work in the general direction of confidence and knowledge rather than self-satisfaction and ignorance (if one wants to)

So, what should one do? Be closed or be open? Be confident or be self-satisfied? It all depends on what you want out of life. For this, you need to have a clear idea about yourself and what you want and what your values are. Unfortunately, this requires you to be open to experiences so that you have an unlimited amount of things to possibly like and relate to. Thus, one should start off with an open mind (and heart). At what stage of his life he wants to become more confident/self satisfied is a call he has to make. I've personally felt that mid 20s is the best time to be more confident, and yes I strongly prefer confidence coming out of knowing myself, my surroundings and everything I can possibly know about- rather than fake self-satisfaction that tries to emulate the confidence.

And well, the most important thing is to enjoy it all and be happy- while not forgetting to add a bit of purpose to life, so that you retain long-term happiness as well. Also, if you're of the highly open kind (like me), just remember that most people are idiots.