The Road Not Taken.

"So many vows. They make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Obey your father. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. What if your father despises the king? What if the king massacres the innocent? It's too much. No matter what you do, you're forsaking one vow or another."

-Jaime Lannister

One of my favourite things to read in any book is the internal conflict of characters and how they overcome it. Duty versus desire. To follow one often means sacrificing the other. How does one confront such a choice? 

Byakuya Kuchiki had to decide between honouring a promise to his late wife which was to protect her sister or fulfilling his duty as a soul reaper by executing that very sister, as demanded by the law. 

Lan Mandragoran had to choose between the love of his life and his responsibilities. Both as a warder to his Aes Sedai and as the last living heir to the fallen kingdom of Malkier. 

Misaki faced a similar struggle. Pursue her passion for sword fighting, or marry into the Matsuda family to fulfil her obligation to her own family thereby abandoning her dream. 

I could go on and on with more examples. This is something all of us will face eventually. In fact, I want to talk about myself at this point. 

I don't know what's going on with me but I feel like I hate absolutely everything right now. I hate that I've only ever lived in one place my entire life. Bangalore is my home and I love my home. I want to eventually settle here but I hate that I've never experienced any other place. I HATE my work. Not just dislike it but truly HATE it with a passion at the moment. I am so tired of doing the same thing over and over again. Most of which is mind-numbingly boring at the moment. I don't want to sit and upgrade libraries to a newer version. I don't want to log the number of hours I work on a certain task like a machine. I sure as hell don't want to sit and make sure those under me have submitted their fucking timesheets on time. These companies are making sure to squeeze every drop of productivity out of you. You are toiling every day from morning till evening for some bastard at the higher up raking in all the profits. They don't even hide it. We are literally called 'resources'. An Angular resource. A java resource. We are not even called employees. I HATE the idea of doing this for the next 30 years. 

Switching jobs won't help either. It's the exact same thing but in a different setting. The only other option is perhaps doing something completely different but that is a very scary prospect. 

Even if I take that leap of faith, decide to walk away entirely and do something else, I have no guarantee it'll work. And if I can't make it financially sustainable, I am fucked. Plain and simple. Because, I have a duty. As a son, I owe something to my parents. Not just in the practical sense but something deeper. I have certain standards which I hold myself to. Ones I won't go into here but they exist. Someday, I will have a duty as a husband. And someday, as a father. I CANNOT fuck up. I cannot throw caution to the wind and do whatever I want. It feels like an unbearable weight but I choose to carry this weight because I love my family. I want to protect them, provide for them, and be worthy of them. 

The choice between duty and desire. Comfort and risk. And in most of these cases, there is no right answer. No matter what you choose, there is something you have to let go of. You can't have your cake, and eat it too. You live with the regret of not knowing whether you did the right thing. You start second guessing everything at every minor obstacle. "Did I choose wrong?", "Should I have stayed?", "Should I have walked away sooner?" 

That's the thing I have realised about adulthood. There is no certainty. You make decisions not knowing how they'll turn out. You can analyse, calculate, pray, and think about it for days and days but you will have to make that choice. And once you do, you just have to live with it. You carry the consequences, good or bad, and keep moving forward. 

All this complaining about me not getting do what I want to. Maybe I sound privileged, or spoiled, or ungrateful. Maybe all of this is just me avoiding accountability. Maybe I am using these feelings as a shield to cover up my own fears of failures, of not being good enough, of not trying hard enough. Or maybe I am just patronising myself. I don't know. I just know that I am tired of everything.