Ambition and Satisfaction: Time for Interleaving?

     Being someone who enjoys writing about anything and everything; starting from relationships to child labour, from politics to sports, from spiritualism to patriotism, I am flabbergasted by the fact that how naïvely I have kept myself away from something I love, since last 2-3 years.  My brisk yet unambiguous reply to the question “Had you not been in the field of Medicine, what would have been your professional preference?” used to be “a writer”! However, now the answer to such a hypothetical question is not so straightforward and I tend to prefix the previous answer i.e. “a writer” either with “perhaps” or with “may be”.  So clearly the ambition has become bit ambiguous and satisfaction, which is the most crucial aspect of life gets silently sandwiched between the ambiguous ambitions. 

     I do not want to generalize my thoughts but I believe that for most of the people belonging to middle class families in India, the term “satisfaction” has largely been used to symbolise professional excellence (in only two fields: Medicine and Engineering!).  The term “Ambition” is just a one-way street to professional excellence.  By no means I am insinuating professional dissatisfaction, rather what I am trying to convey is that ambitions are multidimensional and we need to nurture ourselves in all the dimensions.  I remember coming across a quote during my schooldays saying “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life”.  Well, that sounds splendid if you have only one love, which was way too easy for us to decide (Medicine or Engineering).  But with age, you tend to travel to new places, meet new people, and get new ideas that give you fresh perspectives about life and the definition of professional “satisfaction” changes.  If I have to give my example, professionally I wanted to be surgeon when I was in the 3^rd year of M.B.B.S, but I loved Pediatrics by the time I reached my internship year, and now I am deeply in love with neurological sciences.  However, there exist affairs beyond academics that are relatively immune to the sledgehammer of time.  I used to love writing when I was in 3^rd year of M.B.B.S, my love was intact when I reached internship year, and I am still deeply in love with writing! But the conflict of interest between the professional and personal ambitions becomes so robust that satisfaction gets asphyxiated. As research is an integral component of my professional life, it is getting difficult for me to have a smooth transition between scientific writing and casual writing. Of course time is one of the biggest limiting factors, but the contents, and the fear of making minute mistakes while writing scientific articles certainly snatches someone’s natural abilities to write casual articles and the biggest victim is “Humor”.  I am sure I am not alone here and many must be struggling to have a perfect rhythm between the things they love.  I know some of my friends who used to be exceptional chess players during my school days and they are now bit disappointed, as they have lost the grip over something they were masters at.  I have come across colleagues who used to be excellent guitarists/pianists but the toll paid in the form of time for the professional excellence has roughened the extra-curricular skills. 

Although I am bit nascent in my professional life, I am convinced that getting professional satisfaction is not a cakewalk, and professional and personal satisfactions are not mutually exclusive.  I bet, more than 99% of us tend to compare our professional progress with that of our colleagues (rest 1% are probably liars).  In such cases, professional satisfaction appears to be a mirage because we will always have someone in our field who will outshine us.  That is why we should not suppress something we love to do by something which may not give us absolute satisfaction. The best bet is to give significant chances to everything that you love to do. Having a life which is too structured, and too professional, is not something we should be satisfied with. It is all about accurately interleaving the ambition, and satisfaction. So go ahead, find time for things you love to do, meet new people, have great conversations; you never know where you will get the inspiration from.