Self-awareness: The Masterkey to a Million Doors

I am the kind of person who likes to have a “purpose”. A destination, so that I can have a journey. The journey to fulfill this purpose, of course, is vastly more important than the purpose itself. In fact, the journey always changes the destination, but the destination gives me a direction.

Unrest: Outside

As I look back at my life, the four years I spent as an undergraduate stand out for various reasons. They were my least productive in some sense. At no point in those years did I have a "purpose". Since middle school, whenever I've had a goal or strong desire, I've burned with passion. School days were spent getting better at an array of curricular and extra curricular activities most of which i did as a duty, but gave me some joy in the process. JEE days were fueled by intense efforts to achieve something quanitifiable and solid (so exactly quanitifiable, and equally irrelevant in my life later), that I wanted for myself. But the journey was what brought the best out of me.

And then I got to an institute, into a study program of my preference, where I suddenly didn't know what to do, day after day. I didn't manage my time, because I did not care to figure out what I wanted to do. Complacency and procrastination were my best friends. So I looked around and did what most of my batchmates did, but I lacked the foresight I needed to structure my time -

--> 4. Job/research/life after four years

=> 3. Great internship/experiences in the third year

=> 2. Good profile/skill building/experiments in the second year

=> 1. Cultivating an enthusiasm to try things from the first year on.

The source for this kind of foresight or concern should've been within, but mine wasn't. I was drifting rudderless in an open ocean of opportunities. So impressionable and yet utterly unmotivated. I have missed deadlines for assignments, semester fee payment, academic registration, internships, grad school applications, and the list goes on… because I never made plans and went through with them. I never put in quality time and effort into anything that I told myself I cared about (except for dance), because I was too complacent. I’d be disappointed when I failed, but none of the lessons stuck. Because there were never any reasons, so I gave myself excuses. Comfortable lies that “protected” me. I ended up with unforgettable memories in the dance club and a lot of cherished friendships, but there wasn't much else I worked for. Nothing else I could build my confidence upon. I was a master procrastinator who always did things in the last minute, and wasted my time doing nothing until then. Spontaneity went from being my friend to enemy.

The problem with chasing others' goals, is that I never really worked hard for them. Never felt like it. I had average grades, and average research experiences, but I convinced myself that I wanted to do a PhD, because hey I had not tried anything else. Because that's what everybody around me did. I told myself that I would love to do it in the same topic of my only proper project experience. And I was arrogant that I would rather go to a top university or none at all. And I went to none at all. I had rejections from every institute, including my "safe" options. But I told myself and the people I loved, that it was all probably because of the grades and one bad recommendation letter (which I never read or could read). I was relying on somebody to identify the "potential" I believed I had in me, that wasn't visibile on paper.

At the end of the four years, I had no choice but to confront the fact that for the first time in my life, I had not just failed miserably, but I was at the mercy of the people who loved me, to find a footing again. While everybody I knew went on for jobs and PhDs, and started becoming self-reliant, I had to try my hand at studying once again.

These activities actually mirrored the constant unrest inside me. During these years, I was fighting personal battles in my relationships.

Unrest: Inside

Some were dramatic. At the beginning was a toxic love story that ate away all my time and sucked the agency out of me. It felt like being up in a balloon, flying higher and higher, until I couldn’t see the ground beneath me. I felt the cage around me but I ‘believed’ that it would break on its own. I buried the pain deep inside, and dragged myself from corner to corner, to ride through it. The cage was unyielding, until I imploded. I had to face a harsh truth, that I had known all along - that this was toxic and it crippled me - to set myself free. Even harsher was the truth that I was naive and toxic as well.

Some were subtle but equally impactful. I had grown up idolising my father and I had been seeing cracks in his "ideal" personality for some time then. Throughout my life until then, I had loved everything about him and his lifestyle - his work, his values, his opinions, his demeanour, his interests, and what not. At this stage, my mother’s little ‘imperfections’ were easier to contend, but my father’s were far more elusive. Because facing them destabilized my desired image of myself. The experiences of being in a liberal environment had led me to inculcate ideas and practices that I knew were against his values. I was in a rocky phase of constantly finding out more and more things about him that I couldn’t identify with. I guess that in the life of every child who grows up idolising one person, a moment arrives that sends ripples through the child’s image of this role model.

This moment also came at the end of my Bachelors, while the failures of my academic education hung fresh around my neck. Four crucial years of my life had gone by, and I had not grown much. I was coming to terms with my past in all its weight, and it crushed me from the inside. But from the outside, I had my backup plans and people were there to support me. I was lost, unlike I'd ever been in my life.

I was contemplating becoming a dancer full time right after college, but fortunately, I knew two simple truths. One, that I cannot be completely artistic, and I needed something intellectually stimulating in my everyday life. Two, that I still liked physics, but I hadn’t tried it hard enough to figure out whether physics liked me. I told my father as much, and I set off for my Masters.

And then came the moment of truth.

Tipping point: reflections

In the simplest of all settings, in the first week of my life in Germany, when I was reading Richard Feynman’s autobiographical stories. He joked, "I don't understand the problem with people, their knowledge is so fragile". His casual delivery managed to hit the nail on the head. It all came crashing down in a single instant. I had a very shaky foundation that was covered in layers of my own lies, and I had been fooling myself for the last four years that I wasn't that bad. He went on to quip,

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.” - Richard Feynman

And then one after the other, all the lies that I had ever told myself began unravelling. Lies in my relationships, so I can avoid the pain of confrontations. Lies in the goals I had for myself, so I could follow somebody else's path instead of making my own. Lies in my lifestyle, so I could do what's easy, instead of what's right.

If I had not been in a position to do something about it all, the pain and shame would’ve consumed me. I had reached my tipping point.

An end becomes the beginning

I went out with a vengeace that I had to reinvent everything about me. It was a monumental challenge, but the path was clear this time. The first way I fixed my problems, was to build my integrity. I adopted a policy of brutal honesty with myself, and at first I didn’t necessarily care how accountable I was to others. This was mainly a coping mechanism to deal with my failures.

The second way was to identify who I am and how I fit in, in my family, with which at the time I had several issues. I had to deal with the nagging torment of not being able to meet others' expectations of me, that existed solely in my own head, and I rose to define who I would be.

"You have no responsibility to live upto the expectations of what other people think you ought to achieve. " - Richard Feynman

The third way is perhaps my favorite. I simply did it to become a better physicist. I discovered the beauty of this subject which only reveals itself in efforts to constantly build up to complex ideas right from the foundations. So I built my foundations all over again, all the way from my basic Bachelors courses, in parallel to the Masters. I've had to constantly ask myself if I had understood something clearly, or if I was fooling myself that I have. To express what I know loud, and what I don't know louder, to myself and eventually to others.

The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Stephen Hawking

I have admiration for a few people I know who are effortlessly honest with themselves. I am not one of them. I am a romantic - I love, I hope, I believe, I dream. It's absolutely not natural for me to be honest with myself, and every now and then I catch myself under the spell of my own deception. I sometimes get to see others deceive themselves in their outspoken reasoning, and I'm particularly empathetic because Feynman is always there to remind me - You are the easiest person to fool.

The drive to first get my foundations right in physics was so compelling and powerful because it required me to have a constant, brutally honest dialogue with myself. The effect of this mindset leaked to every aspect of my life, and I began enjoying this engagement with my thoughts. Being vigilant had made me more observant overall. This was the beginning of my self-awareness.

"Am I saying what I feel, or do I have an ulterior motive here?"

"Am I choosing to be honest over kind, because I care or because I don't?"

"Am I offended that someone has showed me I'm wrong? Am I uncomfortable that this person derives pleasure from proving me wrong? Am I happy that I'm learning something anyway?"

“Do I want this for myself, or am I doing it because I am afraid of what others might think?”

"Do I have a real reason not to exercise, or am I simply giving in to the pleasure of staying idle?"

“Am I silent, because I’m scared to look stupid? Am I saying something I don’t know for sure? Am I admitting it?

”A liar is a man in fear" - Kahlil Gibran

It became much harder for me to procrastinate, when I was constantly facing the truth that procrastination had led me to live a subpar quality of life. It became natural to get over it, you’d be surprised how the mind begins to play along. In rare cases, I would delay something for no good reason, and my voice would haunt me, "What is the real reason you are pushing this for later?" I’ve gone from enjoying the pleasure of being lethargic to the satisfaction of being productive. My confidence has soared, and my efforts have finally showed up on paper as well.

A new normal

This "me- time" where I’m in constant conversations with myself, is the springboard from which I've managed every other change in my life. I enjoy the activities that feel meditative, where I get lost in my thoughts: biking, trekking, cooking, walking, training at the gym or park, grocery shopping. I realize the pleasure and independence of a student life, but the truth is that I carve this me-time out for me by saying no to the temptations of worthless socializing. It has removed my guilt of being unproductive, and made my social life actually enjoyable. I cannot function if I am not in my zone now and then. My time has now become my biggest asset.

What do I think about? Everything. Its the pleasure of lazing around in the mind. Oscillating between thoughts on people, books, ideas, goals, lessons, and also a hundred other dumb things. But being in touch with all my feelings honestly.

Reflections and the rewards

Trust is hard to come by, but it makes life easy and efficient. Trusting oneself is no different. Being vigilant and identifying my own mistakes is so painfully draining, because I constantly face my lies, issues and limits. The ego dies a thousand deaths and the truth is always humbling. I've had to confront so many ugly truths, that have knocked down my self esteem so bad, that I’ve reeled from the shock of it for days. It has taken immense courage and strength to pick myself up and take away the lessons without feeling like my past is a pile of regrets.

True awareness has ultimately been the agent of all other big changes. It has helped me move on from my heartbreaks and my worst times. Now when I look back, I am grateful for these failures that have revealed me to myself. If your weakness is your enemy, the knowledge of your weakness is your ally. The reward of facing harsh truths has always been clarity of the most pristine form. One that emboldens you, shows you the path and gives you the strength to move on from it. And it has led me to realize the best and worst of me, so I can make my own destiny.

I've been facing harsh truths ever since I faced the first one. But the process from ignorance to truth, from confusion to clarity, remains the same every time. If I could write a note to my past version, it would be this:

The Gift of Truth

"You’ve heard it everywhere, that the truth sets you free,

But you don’t understand how. Because you cannot, at will.

Because wisdom is a fruit of the tree of experience.

You cannot possess a clarity, at that which you have not fully faced.

The moment of reckoning is a persistent visitor.

She's a messenger with a gift, but she’s annoyingly quiet.

She raps on your door, but you cannot hear her,

You are immersed in the din of your own conundrum.

You search for an answer inside, in the space of things familiar,

But you see what you have always seen. And while she silently leaves,

You are oblivious to a gift you have not received.

But she comes again. And she brings the same gift.

She tries to deliver it, and you miss it again.

And then, once, you hear it. You realize her presence.

You know what you seek, but you know not, its form.

You have an inkling of an idea, of what’s beyond the door,

but you are incapable of picturing the entirety of it.

You fear what you cannot fathom, but you don’t realize,

That your fear is founded on what you merely know so far.

You surrender to the fear, and leave the door unopened.

You comfort yourself, and rightly so, that to fear is human.

So there she leaves, the messenger. But she comes again.

And there she knocks, and there she leaves.

Soon enough you have figured, this time from within,

That the answer is not within. And now you wonder,

That perhaps it has been around, you have missed it all along.

You are bathed in a shame, only you have brought upon yourself.

You are saved by an empathy, only you can extend to yourself.

And now when she comes, you are ready for her.

So open that door, and behold the messenger.

She delivers the gift, but the gift delivers you,

For it is the gift of a scorching truth.

A flame on a pyre of familiar lies.

Be blinded by it, for you cannot look away.

Step into it, because through is the only way.

Be purged of your ignorance.

Be burned by the flame.

Be reduced to ashes.

And become the flame.

So the light that you need, to find your way,

Comes from within. So you realize,

That what you sought, has always been within.”