Things which have changed over the years...

As I enter 2011, I look back into my past and get reminiscent of the things on how I have traversed through various challenges to arrive into a state what I call "Today". While not trying to be pessimistic, when I look upon my past, I remember there used to be a fight for everything which I wanted to do, which I wanted to accomplish.  Today I get reminded of the efforts that I had undertaken during my early college days to learn Java. I didnt had a PC of my own and i skipped my college classes to go and work in my friend's PC to learn Java on Notepad (Not even IDE like Eclipse). We didnt had access to internet, so it was not possible for me to download any code samples and try them out. So I used to access the net cafe by travelling 7 KMs to Roorkee town, some times write the code down in a notepad and then bring them back to my college PC and try it out. Of course, I had internet at home, but I frequented my home only once in a month or 2 months. But I did ensure I made a good use of the weekend nights I spent at home to try what I wanted. For every new Java API jar I wanted to try, I had to wait till I go home, download them on a floppy and bring them back to hostel and many times the floppy would fail to keep the data safe while I reach back to Hostel and those used to be most frustrating moments. Nonetheless, the step by step process of overcoming the challenges did reap in benefits including award winning "My Messenger" and final year project "LAN RADIO".

Now here I am, having access to Internet on my PC, Captivate (Samsung) anytime anywhere, but I am NOT using it so exhaustively as I would have during those days or would I have? Was it the quest of knowledge which was driving me to do variety of things to learn Java or was it the sheer interest in breaking through the challenge or was it a combination of both? I agree, the priorities have changed, the perspective of life has changed enormously ever since I left college. The quest for knowledge still remains, just that the focus has moved on. Life has big mysteries waiting for me to solve and Java was just a part of it. Challenges appear in new shape and form and the struggle to break through them is still ON.

Nutshell, the challenges are part of your life and they help you grow. Fearing them or running away from them is not going to help either. Some of the challenges may require huge sacrifices (learning Java made me miss so many late night movies which my friends had watched and some of the great moments of my college); and so it eventually boils down to CHOICE - if you want to break through it or leave it as is. In essence, I feel the blue pill, red pill concept as shown in MATRIX, is very apt in our life, wherein we as individuals are always offered two doors either of them would lead to a different future.