Now where do I go?

Its extremely weird... All your life, you think you have just one dream... one ambition that is nearest and dearest to you, a dream for which you are ready to do anything at all... But what happens when one fine day you decide to stop for a while, sit down and rethink life and become all philosophical? What happens if you begin to wonder if the dream you have been chasing is indeed close to your heart?

A dream is a wish your heart makes and a dream that you wish will come true....

This dream is what brought me here to Singapore. This dream is how I picture myself once I get my Ph.D. Its not about winning the Nobel Prize or any other recognition. Its not about publishing loads of brilliant papers either... I just dream of becoming the perfect (or near-to-perfect) scientist... the scientist who is always interested in learning, who is well versed in all lab techniques, who has a vast amount of experience, who gets excited and not disappointed when faced with problems and challenges. A scientist who graduated with honors and who got a doctrate from the best university in the world after working under one of the best scientists, a scientist which any company or university would love to have (and would pay through their noses to have one like me!!! :P Just kidding!)

So folks... here I am... trying to go after this dream... I wrote an email to this professor at an institute here who is doing amazingly interesting work in his lab and I asked him if he could take me as a trainee for the next summer vacation. I asked him to give me an appointment. He replied promptly and told me that 2 of his post doc students were also interested in talking to me and if all went well, I could see if I fit in one of their groups. I was in cloud 9 the minute I read that mail and was bouncing all over the place! People must have thought I had gone mad because I just couldn't stop smiling! Everything seemed so beautiful all of a sudden. I was truly happy... I just might get to work with real scientists if I manage to impress them when I meet them!! Wow! Cool!!!

Now, about a couple of hours have passed since I read that mail, and most of the euphoria has died down... I am calm now. Damn it! That made me think about this whole trainee prospect in a different way! Getting the project there would mean that I won't be able to go home next summer vacation... and I can't spend as much time as I did this time with my family. People, whoever think that 3 months of bumming around at home is boring, I beg to differ, 3 months of spending time with mom and dad while bumming can be the most awesome experience after staying away from them for a long time.

These summer holidays made me realize that though I love my life here at university, I also miss the life I used to live when I was at home, living with my parents. What could me better than spending time with family?

Now I look ahead of me... I have no idea where I will go after this... I don't know where life will take me... but I do know one thing for sure, wherever life is gonna take me is not gonna be home in India... I am only going to end up moving further away. Now when I think about it, all the times that I took for granted at home have become so precious... Things are never going to be the same again and that depresses me. This is what makes me stop and think... what is my dream? To become one of the greatest scientists and do the most amazing research, or to be able to spend loads and loads of time at home with family. They are kinda mutually exclusive events... atleast for the time being they seem to be...

I got so depressed when I thought about it, I called my mom and we had a nice long chat over the phone. She told me that she also had to leave home when she was young to go after her dreams. She also had the choice of abandoning her dreams to stay with family, but she chose to go after the dreams.... against all odds... And she tells me that she is happy that she did... Looking back, she says that if she had decided to stay back at home, she would have never been happy and satisfied. She had to do something and that worked out well for her. She reminded me that I have a great thing going on here. One thing will lead to another and make life better... I just have to keep my dream in mind, take it seriously and work to convert it into reality. Thats when I snapped out of depression.

A dream is a wish your heart makes and a dream that you wish will come true....

So what if I can't spend as much time as I used to with my family? Doesn't mean that I don't spend time at all with them. The time we spend talking over the phone, sending IMs, christmas vacation etc may not be much... but its QUALITY TIME. And very often in life, quality matters more than quantity, right? If I had stayed at home, I wouldn't have been as happy as I am today. Today, I am happy and so are my parents, about where I am, where I am headed and what life may have in store for me. That happiness is what makes the quality time that we spend together a million times more beautiful. We all have to do something worthwhile in life, and now its my turn to do it. And I shall do it in style.

No matter how much we are together, we are never going to be happy when we depart... we are always going to want more. Thats human nature... not every decision that we make is going to be easy. Nobody said things would be easy. So might as well go with the flow and enjoy life as it flies by...

"Sometimes you are up and sometimes you are down, when you are down, then take a look around, and you just bound, bound, bound and rebound!" :)