Success, fame, etc

I bet you've read in a lot of articles or self help books or have been told by some gurus on T.V. that sucess and fame are overrated and if we want to be happy we shouldn't be mindlessly running the rat race. So today, I had a question in my mind. The people who write these books, the people who give these little speeches, aren't they all famous and successful themselves? Some of them are only famous because they're telling the world not to run after fame. What an irony! Who are these people to tell us not to strive for fame when they are themselves everything that they tell you not to be?

And you only listen to these people because they're famous and successful! Why in the world would you listen to anyone who has done nothing special, someone who is just a common man?

P.S. - I'm not trying to make any point here. I just had this thought today and felt like sharing it

An introduction

‘Who am I?’
This is a very tough question which inevitably bothers everyone. The answer to this question is everchanging. Who I am is actually a very transient concept and is also a function of time. I realize now how tough this whole ‘writing an introduction about myself’ thing is. Where do I start? What do I write about? What is that thing which is so central to my character that I would choose to tell if I had to be really honest and I only had a few words to do so?

And then it strikes me. It brings a smile to my face as I realize it. I’m nihilistic. It’s 1:30 am on Monday right now and that’s when I have started writing this. Nihilism is the one thing that has defined me since the past couple of days and procrastination is what I have been doing since then. Most of it stems from a general hatred towards IIT classes. The same thing happens at the start of every semester. I start hating IIT classes, I sleep in classes and all I do after classes is relax because the classes were so goddamn boring and I need a break after them. It has barely been two weeks since college started and I have already missed a lot of classes. That doesn’t worry me a lot but my not-doing-anything does. It’s that time of the year when I develop a dislike for any type of organized work and it is wrong. I can say with certainty that it is wrong because there are certain things which make me happy and there are certain things which don’t. Doing nothing is one of the things that makes me very unhappy in the long run. When I realize this, I start to come out of my laziness. That makes me happy. That makes me write this. I know its not the first time that this is happening and its definitely not the last but it feels good to beat the lazy bastard who takes over me every now and then.

Who am I? I am someone who wants to be happy. That pretty much sums it up. This is the only constant in me. This does not mean that I am just one step away from my goal, now I just have to find the things which make me happy. Those things are ever changing and that becomes a source of great confusion. I am confused. Confused about what I want to do after IIT and what I want to do for a living. It’s the third year of college. The time when people around me are starting to decide what they want to do after college and are starting to work towards it. A little fraction of those people have realized what they want to do. Notice the two things are different. I hold realizing what you want to do much above deciding what you want to do. I’m starting to realize what I want to do but I’m still not there. I really believe that I can find something which I’m really passionate about and still make a living out of it. I know about a lot of things that I don’t want to do.

What do I know right now about what I want? I want to do something in which I can be creative... It’s definitely a start.


P.S. - This is part of an assignment of a Creative writing course which I'm doing. It was supposed to be titled 'An Introduction', we had to write about ourselves and we had to be "brutally honest".