Diplomacy

Twice, I've tried to complete this post. Twice, the Internet connection has failed. The frustration has grown exponentially, though.
I've learnt a lot of stuff in the past month, during my internship at IIT Bombay. One of the more enlightening discoveries being that the word 'learnt', while used extensively in British English, is considered colloquial in American English and is to be avoided like the plague on your University Application.

The other slightly insightful discoveries which forms the crux of my stay at IIT Bombay is that you cannot - I emphasize, cannot - survive life, no matter how skilled/rich/hardworking/determined/sincere/add-random-positive-adjective you are if you are a stranger to the art of diplomacy.

This is something I've learnt the hard way, or as it is commonly termed, from personal experience. You must develop the talent of sweet-talking people into getting your way and yet ending up satisfied with the outcome. If you cannot, you won't live long enough to know what hit you. It starts of as a small job; something rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things. You slip up, not giving it enough attention, assuming it's a very common occurrence or maybe it won't happen the next time. But there's always someone watching. And that someone is biding his time, waiting for the moment when he can catch you off guard and leave you lost in the blame that is bound to find its way to you.

I say this with utmost care. Learn to sweet-talk the boss. Don't be a suck up. That would be overdoing it and leads to problems of another kind, entirely. But keep the boss happy. Then use that happiness to get what you want. If you can't do that, I'm afraid you've already lost the battle. Yes, it's not work, it's war. Deal with it.

While I've been on the wrong side of diplomacy and experienced all that can go wrong, I've also seen the good side and how much you can achieve given that you know your way around people. The difference is mind-numbing. So that's going to be my goal for the next month. This internship at IIT will teach me diplomacy, if nothing else. I'm pretty sure it's the most important skill I could have learnt.

The Path

There is always a path to follow. It doesn't matter where you are and where you wish to go. There will always be a clear, well trodden path. It will be simple, straight forward and will lead you to your goal. Or what you would consider your goal. Because there hasn't been a single person that knew what their goal was. All they know is they need to get somewhere in the vicinity of what they think is their goal. That's about it. It would be enough for them to consider themselves successful.

The truth is, no path is ever going to get you satisfaction. There will always be that longing for having done something different; something better. Being a better man takes the will and determination to break the path. Success isn't ever a title held by the followers. This sounds clichéd but that's only because it takes experience to realize it, and by the time you have that experience, you're too far gone from the choice to break free of that path.

There is always an idiot that will choose to break the path just for the sake of saying 'I did it'. They may or may not, in their adrenaline-fueled frenzy to break free of the norms, achieve success. That's mighty lucky and an accidental case, not to be mistaken as well-deserved fruits of labor, or worse -  destiny. It is highly short-lived and pretty much like giving a box of cigarettes to a monkey. He won't know what to do with them, and by the time he tries everything and realizes, there won't be a cigarette left in a condition worth lighting. Pardon the complicated analogy, I'm in a state of semi-conscious torpor.

The point I'm trying to make is it's not always necessary to break the path. You need to realize when it calls for keeping your head down and pushing onward and when to break free to Forge your own path, unsure of where the destination lies. More importantly one needs to have their priorities clear on why they would break the path otherwise it is all in vain. Simply a waste of time, efforts, and a life. So feel free to walk off the path. Jump, duck, run and fall. Learn as much as you can because experience is the best teacher. Break the path when you know in your gut that it's the right thing to do. At the end of the day, if nothing else, the experience will make it worth it.