On this WordPress forum, I have come across a brilliant sonneteer and a poet, David Emeron. And when I asked the secret of his strong imagery, beautiful rhymes and musical sonnets, he told his secret to be love AND perseverance. I agree with him. Everything superior about our life or our skills come from perseverance. Many people claim to love, only a few have the perseverance.

I have come to believe that I, essentially, am a misfit in the world. In saying so, I mean to say that I find it hard as well as ludicrous to adjust myself to the casual ways of the world and its people at large. In fact, I find it very tough to even appreciate the frivolity that spans the world and its people. World lacks perseverance and what it has in abundance is frivolity. This frivolity has led to unprecedented increase of mediocre aspirations, mediocre people, mediocre careers, mediocre marriages, mediocre relationships and all that spans a modern human’s life. There is nothing superior or first-class about modern human’s life, everything is mediocre. No wonder 99% of human population dies as mediocre with mediocre marriages, with mediocre jobs, with mediocre life stories and with mediocre burial or cremation. Why are there fewer rich people? Why are there fewer entrepreneurs? Why are there fewer scientists? Why are there fewer leaders? Why are there fewer poets? Why are there fewer artists? Out of a population of 7 billion and growing, we can count number of world leaders or scientists or entrepreneurs or poets or artists on our finger tips [figuratively, when compared to the population]. Why are there fewer people with superior business, superior marriages, superior love, superior relationships etc.? Why is 99.9% of the world and everything about it is so mediocre?

However, this blog post is not about world, this is about perseverance, me and my experiences with the world. I consider myself a misfit because I refuse to be casual about the words that I utter from my mouth, or the feelings that I express from my heart or the work that I do with my hands, or the patent specifications that I draft from my intellect, or the languages that I use for communication. And to not be casual and frivolous, and to attain superiority in at least select spheres of life, takes a lot of perseverance. For example, I never text using “sms lingo” or whatever fascinating name has been given to the usage of ‘u’ in place of ‘you’, ‘4’ or ‘fr’ in place of ‘for’ and many such atrocities that my favourite language is subjected to. Consider this: I send a text to a person X -“Hello, I will be available to meet you at Patisserie Valerie at High Street Kensington between 4PM and 6PM, else I can meet you tomorrow at your office. Please inform me accordingly” and the reply that I receive is- “k, ossom, i’ll lt u knw”. In reply to my reading delights, the receivers of my texts, almost all the time, send me such eyesores. I have stopped texting them altogether. And instead, prefer to call, and subject my ears to their casual attitude. And the most ludicrous part is that out of these people, some have gall to “mock” me for being ‘pedantic'(never mind the abuse of the word ‘pedantic’ by them though). This frivolous and casual use of language has led to mediocre communication, casual communication or the communication just for the sake of it.

I have an unwavering commitment to the words I say from my mouth or the feelings I express from my heart. I want to live for them and I can also die for them. And once again such commitment requires a degree of perseverance. And this has hurt me regularly because the world around is casual about the words that flow and feelings that are expressed. It is full of frivolous people, with frivolous sentiments and frivolous aims. Many people fall in and out of relationships periodically. They go through periods of sadness and grief while coming out of one but are able to overcome it and enter a second one, with equal passion and without any memories of past. More so, they repeat same words, express same feelings, and since the other person is casual too, this will be just fine for him too. I have come to the conclusion that if you are not the “casual” kinds and cannot find someone exacting to your standards of perseverance, don’t go for relationship and marriages, because if you go, you will end up in a mediocre marriage, mediocre life and a mediocre family or you will eventually have a heart break. It takes perseverance to realise the words/feelings you utter, 99.9% people lack the perseverance. They may have abundance of love [that they can share with n number of people], but they will have absolutely zero perseverance, which they will have for nobody.

Since I am too fed up of world and its casual and frivolous ways, my mother is assured that I will not be able to find a girl fulfilling my such aspirations or expectations. So, she has taken upon herself to get me “arranged-married”. After months of expeditions of my mother and her perseverant persuasions, I finally ‘shortlisted’ a girl about whom I felt that I can be genuine with and honest to, and which I was while I appreciated her over the phone, and expressed how I felt about her, that I found her simple and elegant and just about the woman I would want in my life. However, the talks got derailed [it’s Indian arranged marriage you see]. And then, as it happens, everybody, including my parents, the girl and the girl’s parents, did a “move on”. Since I was being genuine about my words and honest to the way I felt, and wanted them to “mean” something in long run, to hold a definite “value”,  I found it all so superfluous and therefore, was the only one left wondering. All these high sounding words, dreams and aspirations require perseverance to put them to life. Now, I have taken many steps back from this whole business of “arrange” marriage, in fact, from entering into any relationship at all. I want my words to matter, therefore, I refuse to utter same words to different people all the time for same objective and that too without meaning them, without the yearn to be perseverant about them. That would lead to mediocrity in life and relationships [business or personal].

In language, when I stress on such minute details as use of comma before ‘which’, or when not to use ‘that’ and when to use ‘which’, or how a sentence in a technical document should have essential elements of English sentence i.e. subject, verb and object, or when to use ‘said’ and when to use ‘the’ and the difference between them, I know I am thought of as “Grammar Nazi” but their lack of perseverance to perfect their skills annoys me.

In all this casual and frivolous behaviour of the world at large, and my constant fight with the people around to not be casual about what they do, what they speak, what they express; I find myself a misfit. It’s true that more often than not, we hold no control on our lives, and it’s usually a sum total of the circumstances playing around us, but then again, this is so because of the casual attitude of the people in our immediate environment, who feed on frivolity and who lack perseverance. If you love someone, then don’t lack in perseverance, stand through. If you are committed to your career, then too don’t lack in perseverance. If you are committed to an art, then too don’t lack perseverance. If you want your words to mean something, to hold a value, a worth, be perseverant about realising them, be truthful to them. Being perseverant is being truthful to your own words, sentiments and goals.

If you do not lack perseverance, then you are a misfit, and just the person who will be counted amongst the fewer superior leaders, fewer superior entrepreneurs, fewer superior poets, fewer superior artists or among those with superior marriages, superior relationships, superior careers, or superior business or just about anything superior. The world is not going to change anytime soon, be a misfit, evolve a perseverant gene in your genome and stand out, if not in all but at least in a few spheres of your life that you choose. Let’s be such a misfit, a pain in the neck of the people around, that they are forced to reorder themselves to fit with us, or else let them wallow in their mediocrity, while we enjoy the superiority!