Happily Ever After

I must have sat down to type the following words numerous times, but refrained from doing so for the silliest and most serious of reasons. I want to write about my happiness. I want these pages to bleed with my joy and bring it to whoever reads it. But I feared doing so for two main reasons - I was superstitious about my mirth attracting the evil eye (silliest) and I was worried about undressing something so personal to me, and putting it out there for the world to mock, and judge. Here’s a statutory warning: If you are not happy with your work life and are prone to resenting the people who are, stop reading now. For those who can wheedle some smiles for themselves from my alacrity, go ahead, knock yourself out.

 

I am insanely in love with my work. And I mean every word of that sentence. You know the excited, giddy, butterflies-in-your-stomach feeling that you get when you’re in love?  When you’re crazy about someone and can’t stop thinking about them? You miss them when you haven’t seen them for just a couple of hours? The rush of inexplicable bliss and gratitude you feel knowing that they’re a part of your life? Sadly, I don’t currently have such feelings for another human being, but that’s exactly how I feel about going to work. Every day.

 

 

For those unaware of my profession, I am a lecturer of Mathematics in an Engineering college. It’s not uncommon for people to talk about the immense job satisfaction they feel in this occupation, and this is a choice I made knowing and anticipating that. It wasn’t really a smooth start, and I’ve changed three jobs this first year of my career, but even with the not-so-great work conditions at my first job, I loved it from the beginning. The first time I walked into a class and the students stood up to greet me, I had a really hard time keeping a straight face. Yes, I laughed. And though I was nervous and shivering for the first few minutes of that two hour class, while I wiped the blackboard when the bell rang and walked out of that classroom, I knew I’d found my place. This is what I want to do, perhaps for the rest of my life.

Two jobs later, you could say I had mixed feelings, but not quite. Though I was thrilled with the response I garnered from the students and my own experiences there, it upset me that the staffroom, like every other workplace is rife with politics, and people who will stoop however low to make you look and feel bad for a personal high. I pacified myself with the argument that since I spent 90% of my time at work among the students, where I had nothing to complain about, I’d just have to keep shut and endure the other one-tenth because you can’t have your cake and eat all hundred percent of it. Luckily, I made a really good friend at my last job, a colleague I could count on to share my misery and stand by me. She surprised me repeatedly with her allegiance, and kept me sane.

And here I am, with my one true love as far as jobs go, and well, third time’s definitely the charm. I have absolutely nothing to complain about my current job. If I ever do, ignore me. I’m probably being a dramatic attention-seeker. If I were asked to list the reasons I find my work right now so satisfying, I could either write a few books on the subject, or plainly admit that the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing (Blaise Pascal). Most of those books would be filled with my experiences in the classroom with the students, stories I can never accurately retell, wonderfully brilliant young adults I can never do justice by painting them with my measly words.

And yet, one thing deserves mention in this hymn for my work is the people I work with. My work family, which can only be described with the closest precision as exactly that, a family. I’m trying really hard here to not sound like the cast of a television show that has run five seasons, but it’s true. The bond I share with the people I work with - the camaraderie, playful jibes at one another, the silent altruistic deeds that need not be done, but are carried out wordlessly by people who genuinely care for each other and are filled with positivity to see their colleagues grow- this kind of positive energy was beyond my most hopeful imagination, something I’d have thought was too good to be true. The tremendous respect I have for my immediate boss is not because he is a figure of authority, but because he is perhaps, the most outstanding man I have met in my life. I doubt I will ever meet a set of people who are so hardworking and dedicated to their jobs. 

 

 

With the age and cultural differences, I never thought I could make real friends at work. I have never been happier to be proven wrong. It amazes me how I’m treated like the baby of the department, and still given the exact amount of respect I deserve, my opinion valued more than it should be. How my colleagues selflessly put my work before theirs, and help me out tirelessly and patiently. How they exalt in my childish gaiety when I have no reason to celebrate, and infuse it back into me on a particularly rough day.

And that is what makes me dizzy. That I am lucky enough to have this in my life.

I just went back and read what I have written, and I almost want to erase it all, because it still does very little to convey what I actually want to. I may never write good enough to do that. But I am still going to put this out there. Because I need this today. And I will every time I forget.

For most part of my life, I believed I would have my fairy tale. It’s a belief most little girls grow up with. You want exactly what you read in the stories. My thought restrained by convention, I thought the ‘once upon a time…’ never came. And one day, just like that, I gave up hope. I almost believed that my fairy tale didn’t exist. I just realized I’ve been living it.