“Colleges are a scam. It is the capitalistic society fuelling you to justify your poor decision to waste 4 years of your life and spend lakhs to do something you don’t really care about.”

I’ve been hearing this a lot lately. As someone who has spent 14 years at school, and more than four years at a college, I have quite a lot of opinions too.

You know what exactly colleges in India offer? —- condensed valuable education? Gateway to prepare you for jobs? Place for at least decent socializing?

Freaking nothing.

Colleges offer you a refuge from the real world. It offers to babysit you with exam rules, memorizing tit-bits and lets you throw away 4 years of your life into trash. Sounds lovely!

Colleges are a place to procrastinate.

Lasting Fulfilment in Life Comes From Getting Out of Comfort Zone — Long lasting fulfillment in life

Staying in comfort zone gives momentary happiness, but lasting fulfillment in life comes by facing challenges

I was talking to a friend who works at a corporate company. Like most 9-5 employees, she doesn't remember a life before the job. Everything in her life —her food, living city, free time, everything is based on her job. She follows all the work-place ethics, and aims to comply with every rule to climb the corporate ladder.

It’s funny how easy it is to give up control on our lives. Everyone is obsessed about stable paychecks, but they do it at the expanse of losing all their individuality and happiness.

I don’t want to live life on auto-pilot, by following instructions designed by someone who doesn't even care to treat me like a human.

Most of all, I’m willing to treat curiosity as a driving force and use struggles as a way to make sense of the world and my role in it.

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What did you love doing as a child

As a young child, Buckmister Fuller was born with extreme nearsightedness.

He was a very resourceful child – who had an incredible sense of orchestrating machinery to work. He even created his own row to paddle along a lake, by observing the motion of a jellyfish.

But had no patience for education—the strict style of learning, and got expelled from Harvard University (twice).

As he grew older, he took on several jobs to sustain his wife and a child. Worked at a meat packing plant, then in the Navy, and then got into a “decent” high-paying job as a sales manager. (Something that Indian relatives would quite approve of!)

But turns out, he was extremely dissatisfied at work.

Restless and anxious, Fuller wanted to find an alternative to leave his job. So he started a business with his father-in-law on a frenzy. Five years after inventing a construction system for the housing industry, their company encountered losses and he was fired.

Fuller was devastated. He had disappointed his wife, lost his reputation in the family and was broke AF. He felt like the most useless person on earth.

So he decided that dying was his only option!

Something short of a miracle happened that day —which he would later describe as a voice, that stopped him.

"You do not have the right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong to you. You belong to Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others.”

After hearing this, his perspective towards life changed.

From this point onward, he decided to devote his remaining years to follow his own experiences, his own voice - to guide him. Bold move.

He basically proclaimed, "F*ck society"

In his mind, he had inventions he wanted to work on – design patterns that will maximize social use of the world's energy resources. And bring great benefits to humanity.

Most of all, he wanted to create something revolutionary, the money, he believed, would eventually follow. Like always. Because whenever he chased money first, it only led to disaster.

Over the years, he put in his ideas, and privileged intelligence to design inexpensive forms of energy— he invented efficient machines, discovered a new family of carbon molecules (fullerenes). And the most famous —invention of geodesic dome.

His ingenuity turned out to be one of the “greatest figures in the golden age or modernity, and his revolutionary and liberating thought made him a counter cultural icon” quoted by OpenMinds, becoming the Man who invented the future.

It’s in making difficult choices — and being open to a long-term efforts —where we find our potential and reality meet and creatity a life out of the dreams and immense fulfillment.

Fuller could’ve gone wrong at so many instances, but he persisted. Nothing in the conventional rules, and jobs engaged his interests. Decent education, and an OK job made him feel miserable.

He decided to work on his inventions —something that he believed in instinctively, for many many years. He then changed the world.

You will go through miserable phases in your lives too. But will we be able to choose the difficult option and follow your dreams?

Challenging life will be fulfilling because it will hurt.
It will be fulfilling because you can never guess the ending.

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People today live life through a zany filter

They’re living a life on the internet. People are sharing the most glamorous parts of their life. And what do they get in return?

Validation.

But is that what we should base our identity on? Where someone else’s “like” gives you little dopamine hits.

You wanted to be “fulfilled” in life— a life that goes beyond pretty beach views, ice-creams and rainbow filter selfies. I love taking selfies looking like a funny rabbit, but, some space for personal growth requires a bigger goal.

Struggles. Difficulties. Scars.

There are important ingredients of a long-lasting fulfillment. It’s anything but comfortable. It demands rejecting the easy path (like- going to a college and procrastinating), choosing some space for personal challenges (like -quitting a mediocre job), and always having something worth fighting for (like -a childhood dream, a higher purpose).

After all, it’s hard to find yourself if you don’t allow yourself to get consistently lost.

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Lasting Fulfilment in Life Comes From Getting Out of Comfort Zone