There Are Two Kinds Of People In This World. What if you belong to the third kind?

There are two major kinds of people in this world; first who find their calling at a very early age of their life, and the second who never find it even in their entire lifetime.

Both are lucky in my opinion; though you may argue that the second ones are clearly not.

But if you consider a third minor category of people who exist in the world, who either find their calling late in the life (when it is too late) or they find it but can’t pursue it for some reason or the other — if you consider this kind and take note of their condition, then you will realize that the second kind of people are not that unlucky after all; in fact, compared to the third-kind they are outright lucky!

For you have to just take notice of the infernal hell in which this third-kind of people burn — the suffering that encumbers their thoughts, the torment that rattles their bones, the anguish that seeps into their blood — and you’ll realize how wretched life is of this third-kind.

For who is more unlucky than these people who arrive into their thirties and forties and find that the life journey that they had been taking all these years was wrong. They were supposed to travel to the east, but have landed in the west. They had hoped to find a shore; they have only gone farther in the grey ocean.

At an age when they should have been settling into their lives, working in a job that does not make them absolutely want to kill themselves, this third kind finds themselves questioning every second they spend doing what they are doing.

A part of them wants to give up this job and start doing what they like. But now the weight of the past life is too heavy upon them to drop. The very degrees that had made them proud once now drag behind them heavy like shackles. The chains are too tight now for them to wriggle themselves free. This third-kind is now rooted in a life they don’t want to live anymore, to a job that leaves them barren and dry.

Unlike their brethren of the second kind who at least have learned to find some joy and motivation enough in the money that they get once a month, who finds climbing the never-ending corporate ladder fascinating, and are encouraged by the pat they receive once in a while in terms of promotions and pay-raises — unlike them, the third-kind have become numb to these enticements.

The money attracts them no more; the corporate circus is absolutely hateful to them. The office politics make them wince; the ass-licking system they can’t follow anymore.

What makes their suffering even more wretched is that even though they might know what they want — a distant goal in their mind that might be hazy but at least it is there — but they have no idea how to reach that place.

For our education-system and society-standards have trained our minds to follow only those goals which have a clearly laid out path to them. Only such journeys that follow a set path are sanctioned; the rest are reduced to the level of fantasies.

Risk-aversion is ingrained in our minds from a very young age. Like lab rats, we are trained to follow a set path, that we repeat first in school, then in college. And by the time we finish our first few years of work, we are trained to follow this path even with our eyes closed.

And by the time the third-kind wakes up to this reality that is actually not a reality, but the greatest nightmare manifested, they find themselves chained to a heavy-mortgage and a consumerist lifestyle. A lifestyle that only compounds expenses every year; a social structure that reinforces mediocrity, acceptance, self-annihilation.

Is there any way of redemption from this situation?

Definitely, there is, but it is not easy. Its cost is large, consequences great. First of all, you have to go against a lot of systems, upset a lot of people. But the greatest fight in such a situation is not external, it is internal. The greatest enemy is your own thoughts, your own belief system.

You have to start from ground zero and start demolishing the foundations with which you created this fake existence you call life. You have to demolish it and pave a new foundation, the one that establishes the base on which you can build the rest of your life. You have to start believing that you are more than the college degrees, the certifications they provide. You have to start believing in yourself — believing in your thoughts, in your own tendencies.

There is no other way; you are fighting the worst enemy that you can face; your thoughts; your way of thinking. Only when you overcome yourself, you can begin the journey for which there is no clearly laid-out roadmap, no pre-defined blueprint.