I was just conversing with a friend about the end of our bachelors degrees. So I'll be a CS Graduate degree holder in a matter of months. What is it I want to do now? I expressed sadness, a sense of loss for that routine, that familiarity with everything in my life that I have had for the last comfortable four years. What next? I might as well go for an MBA, but that seems so... ordinary, so arbitrary. It brings to my mind the image of a long line of treadmills with corporate employees on each one, trying to outrun the other all their lives, not realizing its a fruitless endeavor. In the end, they're so spent with trying to play catch up that they are running just to keep their positions in the line until eventually they fall off the treadmill.

I don't want to be on a damn treadmill.

I always envisioned a life to have some meaning, some creative outlets by which one could potentially change the world, or at least change the "mahulla" (neighborhhood). When I think of people changing the world, I think of artists, architects, poets, painters, writers, directors, et all. I do not think of MBAs. Maybe that's why I'm reluctant to join the ranks of the millions who graduate from business school each year. How can you change the world when your primary concern is maximization of profits? Let's say though, I do become one of these ultra-creative people. Let's say, somehow, by working my ass off for half my life, I manage to actually do something worthwhile, provide some meaning to my otherwise meaningless life. What then? Is that brief moment of glory within and without going to have to be the sutainence for my soul for the rest of dreary life, which I would spend trying to duplicate the past success and most likely not being able to? Is that what life is supposed to be about? Flogging yourself to death to leave your mark and then basking in the brief glow of recognition and appreciation, only to be relegated back to the end of the line so that the next person can have his scheduled 15 minutes of fame? Would that fill in the void in my life? If yes, then how shallow does one have to be to prostitute one's own art, one's own creations just to satisfy that lust of public approval? Is that who I want to be? Is that who I already am?

Oh, for a life of sensations rather than thoughts.