There are countless opportunities for personal growth and creative fulfillment that we often set aside in our pursuit of material success

I was having dinner with a friend on a recent visit to Mumbai. He quit a high-profile corporate job a few years back. As he settled into a new unknown routine, he started experimenting. He wrote articles on the relevance of festivals in the modern world, moderates a talk show, has started learning Sanskrit to read the scriptures in original, participates in marathons, and loves to cook.

Not surprisingly, his life mirrors mine.We got around to discussing another mutual ex-colleague, who was recently in the hospital due to a medical scare which could be attributed to a life spent on a stress-inducing work schedule. He has recently crossed the age of retirement but has accepted an extension.

I told him rather bluntly that he should stop working, a sentiment that his wife reciprocated. The response was on expected lines, “What will I do if I take retirement?” I immediately listed the number of things that he could do, the chief among them being to take care of his health, and many other activities that he had wanted to indulge in but could not, caught up in the daily grind of living life and earning.

This incident struck an immediate chord with the Mumbai friend, who had a similar experience with yet another mutual friend.Many do not have the luxury of taking retirement. They must necessarily work till the end for the next meal on their table. There is a smaller population, though not insignificant, which can do something different. These are the people, who like me, were provided the best by their parents within the limited resources that they could earn. Even those limited means were better than what most had, and which helped us to dream and create a list of things that we wanted to do. We pursued a few of these with a single-minded devotion particularly the ones related to materialistic possessions, ignoring others that were mostly related to our creative side that we tried to suppress. Many of us have now reached a level of comfort that enables us to have a relook at the ones that we missed.

A friend has started learning the keyboard. Another friend started taking flying lessons and was looking forward to completing the hours necessary to earn a license. Now in the reverse count of my life, I realise that I wish to travel, I want to write, I have the urge to make friends, and I want to help others to dream.Many like me wish to alleviate the drudgery of the majority so that at least the coming generations can look forward to creating their bucket list. We have seen many initiatives taken by the government over the past few decades to create an ecosystem to help the less fortunate. Corporations also earmark part of profits in a separate fund as social responsibility.

There are individuals from certain communities who donate a percentage of their annual earnings for the purpose. There are faiths actively involved in the betterment of many. I have often wondered about the miracles that we can achieve if all these agencies and individuals come together to ensure that future generations have an option.There is always an answer to the query, “What will I do?” We need to look within and then look around. There is so much to do, and so little time. Mark Twain summed it up well, “Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones that you did do.”

(The writer is an author, speaker, coach, arbitrator and strategy consultant and  conducts workshops on creative writing; views are personal)