More money or a peaceful life? If you choose the second option, then even at the age of 27, you will feel that life has just begun. This is not said by any ordinary person, but Arjav Modi, who studied from IIT Kanpur. Arjav has explained a very deep thing by comparing the hi-fi corporate life of Bengaluru and the slow life of the mountains. Arjav himself works in the writing field today and has shifted to the mountains for the last 4 months. He says that despite low salary and less facilities, life in the mountains is much better than a job worth Rs 40 lakh in Bengaluru.
Arjav starts his story from Bengaluru. Imagine, you are in Bengaluru. The annual package is Rs 40 lakh. Everything needed for a successful career is at hand. There is Uber for commuting, good cafes, weekend plans. If you look around you will see all boys and girls of 21-22 years of age. Someone is doing a new startup, someone has got funding at the age of 19, someone is an intern at Google. In this crowd, you start feeling old even at the age of 27. It seems as if the best time of life has passed and you are left behind.
Why is this world different?
There is a race going on all the time. To get ahead of others, to earn more, to look cooler. In this process you become alone. Even amidst thousands of people, one feels a strange feeling of suffocation and loneliness. Money is in the bank, but there is no peace in the mind. You’re tired, and you don’t know why. You have left Bengaluru and come to a hill village. You have a small and lovely 1BHK. Snow covered mountains are visible directly from the window. There is no noise in the morning, I wake up to the sound of birds.
Your income here is not even half that of your friends in Bengaluru. No 40 lakh package, no luxury. You don’t travel in Uber, you travel on your old scooter, or sometimes you go on foot. In the evening you go to the market yourself and buy vegetables and talk to the shopkeeper for two minutes. Life is very simple. No one judges you here. No one asks how much is your package or how much growth you have achieved in how many years. Here the 21 year old boy is also your friend and so is your 60 year old uncle. Here success is not measured by age.
For this reason, at the age of 27, you feel young and not old. You feel that hey, real life has now started. You are happy, relaxed, living in the present. No unnecessary pressure, no pretense. Arjav says that he learned this by staying in the mountains for 4 months. We often think that our happiness depends on our salary, our job or our title. But the truth is that our happiness depends on where we are living and among whom we are.
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