The Previlege to be frustrated

I always read a lot of books, not because I loved reading books, but it was marketed as a nerdy thing to do. It was an okayish experienc, neither enjoying nor hating it. It was just meh ( A few books like “And then there were none” actually keept me hooked for entire days, but those are exceptions). And over the years, I have been on and off on reading. I picked up a few books in the past years, but it was very sporadic and not very consistent. But I recently read a book from John Green “Everything is Tuberculosis” maybe probably made me fall in love with reading again. There is somethiing about a novel writer dropping everything and focusing on an important socioeconomic issue really opened up my eyes to a lot of perspectives, including meta thoughts I have had about society.

I have always been a previleged person, in potentially every possible way. I had good health, education and a happy circle of people. This was never because of just one or two people’s will. Previlege is possible because a coalition of multitude of people (of the past, present and the future), were willing to give you a good headstart. That aside, I have had my down days just like everyone that ever lived has, getting angry that my bus route is canceled for a month and I have to walk 30 minutes when I should have stayed comfy, or that a random person spilled coffee on my laptop. But these are all short lived and don’t really affect any of my long term privileges.

I am inherently a stickler for my central philosophy, and follow my own set of principles. And one of those principles is, fundamentally, keep working and keep hustling – the position you have is a privilege. This has led me to a lot of guilt when I do not push myself enough on certain days, when I take a longer than usual break from work. Even having fun in the moment and not thinking about my work every waking moment feels like I am throwing away my life. These sort of thoughts are well elucidated by my relationship with writing. Having historically struggled to write, I fail to get my thoughts across as clearly as I want to. Even these blogs have always been unstructured, with me writing whatever comes to my mind on a whim. No coherence, or structure. As a person in the business of writing ( as a grad student ), this only bodes bad outcomes. I needed to come up with solutions to this, and I have been working on this. Jumping on every chance to write, failing and getting feedback ( and subsequently improve ) I can feel my structure and vocabulary improving. Even then, I constantly procrastinate on any sort of writing because of my previous experinces with writing and this has caused me significant guilt and introspections ( As clearly illustrated by the lack of blogs on my website since August 2025, even though I have atleast 10 different ideas written on my to-do list ). A logical person will say this is natural and expected. Writing is also a skill, just like coding or cubing and you can always improve. But it’s very hard to sleep easy knowing there’s work to finish.

The book made me realize a few tangential things. 1. It is a good thing to impose your own style to writing. The book read like a novel, but covered a profound issue woven into society, following the life of a kid and his struggles with TB. I realize that it’s okay that my blog is unstructured, that is probably what adds the human element in. Any AI can write monotonous and dead sounding paragraphs. But these words are uniquely mine. 2. The social divide in society runs much more deeper than what the average human is exposed to. I have been aware of this fact for a long time, but never really embraced or introspected deeply. The fact that TB has had as cure for almost a century and people are still struggling to find cures is baffling me. How can I think about my splilled coffee, when people are struggling to survive by no fault of their own.

It is always easy to blame the victims of societal failures and turn the other way, never really realizing the previlege you have been fortunate to have. The harder part is to overcome biases, realize what needs to be done and take action. I also never liked people that flaunt their previleges to those less previleged, and avoid them like the plague. Just by uttering the statement, I am being hypocritical and implying that I am the other way. That’s not true, I am painfully aware that I have not done anything of significance to label other people. Does it mean I am one of them too? Do people see me that way when I write I have done X, Y and Z on my resume? are questions I still don’t know the answer to. I know that whatever the answers be, I have to be more thankful to the millions of people who have enabled me to stand here and pass this on to the next person.

What is the point I am trying to make? If I’m not working towards helping those not as fortunate as I have been to become atleast as previleged as I am, then I don’t really think there is a point to learning and knowing so much. I think science and ideas should have some a well formed application in the end. The book showed me a side of myself that I never really understood, but I’m willing to explore. I have never thought of myself as a person that does what they’re told, only sticking to my philosophy. But recently, I find myself conforming more and more to constraints and limits. I feel the mechanical life kicking in and the color draining away a little bit. I do think warking is crucial, while also realizing that focusing on yourself is even more important to keep yourself motivated and keeping your goals clear. Creativity and ideas are what make every one unique and that unique aspect should be explored in full for the betterment of every human life. After reading this book, I feel so full of hope that there is so much to solve and the world could actually benefit from my contrubition. I have had my fair share of frustrations and anger at certain aspects of my life. But at the end of the day, I am, for all purposes, previleged to be frustrated and I hope to help more people experience that previlege.