ٰAs I am advancing in years, the transition seems more from abstraction into concreteness than in age, really. I preferred to think of myself as some sort of a prodigy, a precocious savior of humanity who is prowling in the dark alleys, waiting for his time to rise and shine. Unfortunately, as it turned out, neither the alleys were particularly dark nor was I, the brightest kid in town. And as this much-loathed realization of mediocrity – the sense that I lie somewhere right under the geometric center of the bell curve of any imaginable global statistical survey – hits home, I am left with an ominous question mark on my own identity – if I am not the top guy, who really am I? My fixation on being the best, shaped partly by my father and partly by my own idealism, had been so strong that it took the form of a purpose to me until I realized that being the best is not always viable for me.

So as the fog starts to clear up, I realize that you can’t satisfy yourselves by standing on a victory stand in every competition life throws at you. Victory stands are in fact the biggest distractions for ambitious men. Competions are to be chosen wisely. When you are 27 years old and you can see life slipping out of your clenched fist like river sand, it becomes a critical question: which avenue of life deserves your attention, time and effort. You cant give everything your everything. You have to be selective. You are not limitless. You are mediocre. Let it sink. Yes, you are. Hard though it might be to register but believing in this is the only way you can amount to anything meaningful, anything worthwhile.