I am 30 now, I have turned into “Chintamani”, and it’s time to change it.

The above image is from my post on instagram which I posted after I turned 30 recently.

As much as I like to say this to myself that I am a cool, fun person. I have realised this the hard way that I have turned into “Chintamani”. Chintamani is my definition of a person who is stressed about everything. Money, health, wealth, life partner, job, future, you name it, I am stressed. I might not show it outside but what you can see, even when you meet me for the very first time, is that I am hiding something, something stressful. So let me take some time and talk about this.

Secretly I have known this for a while now but it is always hard to accept bitter facts. I use to hide this fact behind a facade that “I am a mature or a deep person”. Well what use is that maturity/depth that internally hollows you out. And time and again people have reminded me that I am too serious about things.

I met a girl in an arranged marriage setup recently, very happy, very lively, a very nice girl in general. But in my company she was serious. And she said something that I knew already. “You are very serious and you should be more happy”. Now this in general is true with me. People get serious around me. Talk just business. And people who are close to me, my few friends and family members have told me similar versions of same sentence. And I was fine with it till now. Being an introvert this was fine, only people whom I wanted to enter my life, entered. But with time, this seriousness, that use to be a choice, became my personality. And this is not good. Because now when I want a company, not just romantically, but new friends as well, I am the biggest hindrance in my life.

And it is not that I am not a fun person, but the problem that I have created for myself is that I am that person for a very few people and a very small period of time because I am not around them for most of the times.

I got a big signal from God himself this year. Message being: “Dude you need to change who you are becoming”. The life style I lived, full of work, eating out most of the time, stressed about finding a life partner before 30, worrying about parents and how to take care of them as they turn old, the injury that stopped my gym, the only place where I used to relieve my stress, exploded on my general physical/mental health. I got health issues, like allergies, then gastric problem like LPR(silent gastric reflux) that limits what I can eat and causing coughing issue. Basically in last 5-6 months before I turned 30, my body said, dude enough is enough, we cannot tolerate this non sense of yours, get your life together and set your priorities.

The biggest stress that I have brought upon myself in last two years is finding a life partner before 30. And a few people I did spend some time with, I was constantly worried about them leaving me. So much so that I did and changed myself just to fit into a perfect partner from their point of view. Ironically (and later I understand it was not so surprising) I was the one who ended those relationships. And it is not their mistake, they were good people, everyone expects the best from their partner. But I should know where to draw the line, what I can do and what I can’t, even if that means leaving that person. A good relationship has healthy boundaries. It is better to be a person with clear boundaries and known limitations than being a yes man. Being a yes man is not sustainable and sooner or later you will explode with all the suppressed feelings which is not fair to the other person as well. And you become a yes man only when there is a pressure from within or outside. In this case myself. Like I have to be in a relationship because everyone is and it is so common. I have to be in a long term relationship before marriage because someone said so. All self created pressures that leads to nowhere.

Now that I am 30, ironically a burden has reduced from my shoulders. Getting married before 30. I will not pressurise myself and the other person, who ever that turns out to be, to move things quickly to a conclusion. Some things like marriages, should take their own time. Things will happen when I am ready and I just need to focus on myself. And no one is perfect, the right person will accept my good and the bad (I have more to talk about this but in another post), the same way I will accept her.

Another issue; I postponed a lot of things for marriage. Bad idea, don’t do it (except a few obvious things). I want to travel international, Iceland specifically, and a lot of places in India. I postponed those plans. I even postponed moving to a nice house hoping I would save a few bucks for future, after marriage. Thankfully I moved to a better place recently. I am also afraid that if I call my parents to stay with me in Bangalore, no girl would say yes to me (I am doing this anyway, will see what the future holds). Mostly a lot of travel plans because going to that place with wife would be so great. You see the problem here. So much pressure on a person that doesn’t even exist yet. I am waiting for someone to complete me, and this might sound romantic in movies but this is just another form of violence. My happiness, over a period of time, has become function of the life partner I find. And the funny thing is, when I stared searching for a partner 3 years ago, I use to say “Only happy people who are fulfilled in themselves, should marry.”

So my priorities have changed, it is not finding a life partner or accumulate X amount of money by this time or anything else, it is very simple, be excited about life. That’s it, each day, every day, be excited about the day. No reasons required. Be happy from the core, not superficially. If I can learn to be serious for no reason, I can learn to be happy as well. I have more than enough blessing in life to be happy about, I just looked at what is not right and was fixated on it. What if I don’t have a relationship, I have a loving family who cares about me a lot. What if I don’t have 10 close friends, I have 2 great ones that are worried I am not well. I earn well, and have a great health(minus recents months that is my doing, directly or indirectly as mentioned above). I have tones of great hobbies and I am an interesting person with a lot of things to talk about, just that I need to smile a bit more 😊. And I think I will attract the right people when I become the right person, or more apt would be, stop being this serious dude all the time.

Mummy and Didi say I use to smile a lot when I was a baby. I have dimples and god designed me from scratch to be happy. Somewhere along the way, I made others a priority and lost my path. And even if I want others to be happy around me, the first requirement is I need to be happy in my own skin.

So here is the checklist of items for the next 6 months:

1. Every morning, wake up and be grateful.
2. Learn to dance, not sure which style, but start something. Because no sad person ever danced and no person who danced was not happy (ignore Shiva and his tandav, he is in a different zone)
3. Iceland. I don’t want to do it solo so will find a group or a person but need to do this trip.
4. Eat good and exercise, get my body back in order.
5. Make efforts to make new friends and/or revive my old friendships.
6. And less important but the more difficult, get complimented on how lively I am 😁

I am trying to reinvent myself at 30, because I know the current path I am on is just going to make me a resentful old man at 60. The Instagram post I linked above talks about the same. I would rather be a man with a broken leg than a broken heart. See you in next post.