RESPONSIBILITY AND FREEDOM

When we are children we have all the freedom and no responsibility. As we become school students and then college students our freedom seems to decrease and responsibility increase slightly. As we pass out from the college and hunt for a job the responsibility increases. On job there are deadlines which we courageously fight out and win over. There are no lifelines there, only deadlines! Then we marry (or don’t) the responsibility increases by the day. Freedom is restricted to weekends. And when we try to exercise our freedom, responsibility seems to take away the pleasure. Moreover, when there are some moments when there is no responsibility, its unfortunate that we adults cannot enjoy the freedom.

Freedom makes us light whereas responsibility puts a burden. Freedom attracts us to Himalayas and responsibility keeps us on plains. Freedom allows us to open a water tap to drink the water and responsibility enables us to close it. Freedom allows us to cover our body with clothes of our choice and responsibility takes care of how much and where we expose what. Freedom is about ‘how we want to do what we want to do’ and responsibility is about ‘how much we want to do what we want to do and don’t want to do’. Freedom is to live and responsibility is to let live. Letting lose a thought is freedom, holding back a certain action is responsibility. When we were children our parents had responsibility and we had freedom, when they become old they should have freedom and we take responsibility. Freedom belongs to mind, responsibility to heart. What food you take in your plate is your freedom, what you waste is your responsibility. Your responsibility gives you freedom to take action; your freedom gives you responsibility to prevent certain actions.

Can freedom and responsibility coexist? Or, do they contradict? Or is there an optimum point where weight of responsibility and lightness of freedom balance each other where life just “is?” I don’t have an answer, do you have it?

While you are on a job hunt….

My Dear Students,
While you are on a job hunt you will definitely work on your ‘altitude’ i.e. brushing up your technical skills required for the job. Following are some helpful tips for keeping a close watch on your ‘attitude’.
- Weekly, at least once, spend time talking with a close friend (could be your parent, lecturer, non teaching staff or a friend whom you confide in) about job hunt efforts, your thought process then, confidence level, your emotions and your feelings. The environment should be judgment-free for good. Writing your thought process also helps. Basically, allow the thoughts to come out of your head and let them dissipate into a careful listener or on a piece of paper.
- Get in a mode to stay with questions, especially psychology related e.g.why was I extra-nervous today before an interview? You can’t stay with a question on: What is currency of Switzerland? You have to know answer for that. Your psychological questions will trigger the thought process like doing scuba diving. You will discover the ocean of your thoughts. Many a times the surface of the ocean seems quiet. We are interested in the activity inside the depths of the mind which are hidden under years of accumulations of self and societal enforcements of beliefs e.g. I want to stay in Bombay for my job, come what may : is your self belief. Be aware and break free from your beliefs. Life is about increasing possibilities, not about cutting them down. Is your belief system fighting between words ‘Bombay’ and ‘Mumbai’?
- Be, feel and experience 100% self responsibility that you are still jobless. Don’t push the responsibility on your time or any outside factor. When the experience of responsibility sinks deep in you you will notice the change in your thought process and notice the mind and incidents going in directions that you had never even thought of.
- Envision yourself with a smile on your face appearing for an interview, shaking your hand warmly with the interviewer.
- Document your professional and emotional learnings from disqualification from each of the previous interviews (in a document like feedback.doc or so). This document will come handy to sharpen yourself for some inter-personal questions from the interviewer. This document will also give you motivation to open books to a specific page and refresh your technical concepts.
- For an interview go with an attitude that “if I am late for the train, the train will stop for me at the railway station and it will leave only after I catch it.”
- In addition to your resume.doc create a document called justify.doc in which write justification of each word and each line in your resume. I found doing this exercise very insightful, it modified my resume a lot.
- My approach of answering questions in an interview was as follows,: Knowing the answer for the question asked by the interviewer has 5 shades from ‘I know’ to ‘I don’t know.’ Device your own words for each shade when you answer the question.
o When you know the answer: You know how to deal with this.
o When ques is worth trying : You say ‘let me try’ or something like that so that even if the flow goes in wrong direction it will not put you in uncomfortable zone.
o When dicey : Say, ‘I’m not sure, but will like to give it a shot’
o When not sure : Say, “I don’t know”
o When you don’t know : Say, “I don’t know”
You are the best judge, choose words carefully. You find what your approach is.
- There may be many companies who will not respond to you after your interview. That’s their problem. For you, if you were selected and you are not satisfied with the job offer please close the loop by saying ‘thanks’ or whatever good words you find to say ‘no’. Being decisive instead of confused and letting the company know about your decision keeps you in their good books. Remember, your attitude is watched every microsecond by the peon to an interviewer, by your employer, your wife and then your children. Don’t keep the employer in a 'guessing' mode after a certain timeout. Send an email to them followed by a phone call and be done with it. You carry the responsibility of your own self, your batchmates and your college with every action that you take during an interview. Its good to be re-enterable than being one-time-types, always. You dont know who will be your boss and your reportee at which juncture of your career.

Sooner or later you will realize that job hunt was not about the ‘job’ but it was about ‘you’, your own experiential journey of your state of mind, of your hunger. Guys and gals, go for a kill! Wish you all the best for the hunt!!