Not settled truth: It takes healthy dose of courage and madness to pursue unsettled life

How many times in our lives have we been cajoled, nudged and convinced by our loved ones and “well-wishers” to “settle down”? If you are exploring things in your career, you should ‘settle down’ with a ‘stable’ job, if you are doing well in career, you should get married and settle down, if you are married, you should have a kid and settle, if you have a kid, you should have another kid or buy a house and settle down. In the eyes of society, no matter how content or ‘settled’ you are, there is always something which will settle you down. From where does this obsession for settling down stem, who defines what is settling down, can we actually ever settle down or is it a chimera but an eternal quest which keeps us going (or stagnating)? -these are the questions we seek to address through this piece. Neither do we claim to know ourselves, nor do we seek to advocate what is right and what is wrong. This piece is an exercise in thinking aloud, trying to understand ourselves, and to question our own assumptions, and in turn society’s. The author Felix Marquardt in his new book The new nomads writes, “The urge to migrate, to quest, to go on a journey is deep seated- ancestral, essential and instinctive”. Further, he elaborates and says, “99% of our time on Earth as anatomically modern humans have been spent as nomads. Living your whole life in the village, town or city of your birth is a relatively recent, anomalous development”. As the hunter-gatherers did not rely on agriculture, they used mobility as a survival strategy. They roamed the land in small, nomadic tribes ranging in size from an extended family to a larger band of not more than about 60 to 80 people. In search of edible vegetation and hunting of animals, long term settlements were impossible; their movement patterns were dictated by and accustomed with nature with shifts in search of fertile lands. As societies moved towards organized agriculture and industrial revolution with economic opportunities concentrated in few centers, humans moved towards the idea of settling down in one place." Marquardt then says, “As humanity embraced the idea of settling down, the nomads started bearing the brunt of modern society. In India too, the colonial policies imposed several restrictions and prohibitions on several nomadic communities and branded them as criminals under the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. The British Raj always felt that Indians and the nomadic communities were justified to be ruled by the colonials as they were barbaric without arts, morals literature, law or reason. Thomas Babington Macaulay on 10 July, 1833 in his speech talks about how barbaric Indian society was as the people were without arts, morals, literature, law or reason. He said, “There is an empire exempt from all natural causes of decay. Those triumphs are the pacific triumphs of reason over barbarism; that empire is the imperishable empire of our arts and our morals, our literature and our laws.” Colonial policies imposed several restrictions and prohibitions on several nomadic communities and their economic activities, due to which many of the nomadic communities lost their cultural- economy and struggled to survive. The reality of settled societies with families, houses and stable work pervaded human minds and being settled became one of the key pursuits. Get a degree, grab a job, get married, have kids, buy a house and yeah, you are settled! People settled in their careers and marriages and parents felt they had fulfilled their duties and worldly responsibilities. It was a stable and secure environment with daily routines and the comfort of familiarity. Within this setup, people experienced life and perhaps stayed content throughout. The social pressure nudged more and more people to follow this template of a settled life. However, times have changed. The age of a person doing one job in a lifetime and living in one house is gone. In the modern economy, one might have to opt for multiple careers, adopt lifelong learning and shift bases many times due to work. With greater degree of prosperity, more and more youngsters are opting for more “risky” career paths and going for entrepreneurship over traditional jobs. Many people leave their cushy corporate jobs to pursue what they believe is their true calling. People are even quitting their settled and stable 9-5 jobs and taking a break for pursuits like traveling to discover oneself and explore the world. The dynamics of relationships are also changing. The age at which people get married is getting pushed ahead. People are choosing to stay in a live-in, get married, not get married, have kids, not have kids. More and more females are also charting their own career path and taking their own life decisions. With the ‘uberisation’ of society, many people have started adopting an asset-light lifestyle. More and more people are preferring rented flats over shelling out a huge upfront amount just to become a homeowner, people are preferring to book cabs over maintaining a car. Today, even the older generation after retirement is engaging themselves in an active lifestyle, starting a second career, getting involved in community service, pursuing their hobbies, and even starting their own venture. This generation too is not wanting to “settle down” after their retirement but venturing into second careers. The COVID-19 pandemic reinforced the inherent uncertainty of life with lives getting uprooted in a short period of time, the same lives which perhaps we have been working upon to settle or put in order. Covid taught us the futility of settling down, with so many people’s lives unsettled during the pandemic. People lost their loved ones, they lost their careers, they lost their physical and mental health, they lost the savings which they have otherwise saved for other events in their life. Does it mean that we should not pursue the things which are considered to lead us towards a settled life? Absolutely, no. Doing a job, getting married, having kids or buying a house, all these are good things to happen in an individual’s life. The point is that the notion of a “settled life” can mean different things to different people and society, instead of compelling people to follow the template, we should encourage people to explore their individuality, follow their passion and facilitate them to pursue a life which they believe is good for them, even if it is an “unsettled” life. It takes a healthy dose of courage and madness to pursue an unsettled life, or unsettle one’s settled life to pursue larger goals. Life is way too short to settle for anything less than what we truly want. After all, excellence is a place where people who refuse to settle for mediocrity live; it is where one reaps from all the hard work sown. “There is no passion to be found in playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” – Nelson Mandela The authors are public policy professionals. They tweet from @_divyarathore and @pratyushpbk handles respectively. Views expressed are personal. Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram .