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Stop the bus, I want to get off. or so I thought

There is a lot of stuff we link to a bus. We can throw people under it when we want our way. We can catch the right one, and we can even catch the wrong one. Often enough, we miss it, and spend years regretting the fact that we could be on it.
My banker friend (look, you can have them, it is not an oxymoron, don't be harsh) Neel says, yes, that is all very fine but what about the ones who hop off midway because we don't like the route? And we think we have a more scenic option in mind. And we don't like the driver and the conductor and the way the bus is run and the amenities are useless, please stop, I want to get off.
And then the bus you take gets a flat tyre and has an accident and comes to a shrieking halt, and the one you got off keeps going and finally those on it reach a destination and you are left wondering whether you did the right thing and if you had stayed on it, maybe you would have been better off. Actually, much better off.
Okay, you have figured it out. I am talking about our professional careers and the analogy holds true. Much as we like to say we have no regrets, that little twinge kicks in. Look at the others on the first bus, they have arrived safely, found accommodation (house), stacked a decent amount of liquidity for post-retirement and even if their lives are made of ticky tacky and sameness, they are smug and snug and safe in harbour.
It is an interesting thought that those who stayed on the bus also have 'What might have been?' moments even as they luxuriate in their pot-bellied club life. They also know they sold their souls to the company store and exhausted their lives as if on a guided tour. After all, they never had an original moment, no delicious state of panic, never wrote their own script, always reading from someone else's hymn sheet. A life spent in subservience.
Do they look at you and feel the hell with the house and the car and the comfort, pure envy that you marched to your own drumbeat and were your own man?
Because then there is you, the office buccaneer, a bit of a rebel, with stars in your eyes, pulling the emergency chain, I am out of this rut, I need to grow apples or make leather goods or start organic farming, this 40kph slowness of the bus is driving me crazy, give me the fast lane someone.
Now the race is done, battles lost and won and you sit there in quiet repose thinking what might have been. There is a mix of defiance and deep regret that you do not want to acknowledge. What if you had stayed on and taken the safe but dull route, seeking the comfort of security rather than reaching for the stars and being adventurous?
Think of your own 40-odd years and many a bus you walked off from and how life would have been today if you had not gambled and thrown caution to every wind, including an ill one.
Of course, if you are asked, you will say that the rough ride was worth it because you did it your way and you were no one's lackey and so what if your cushion of comfort is now skinny and fragile and those who stayed on the bus have that bank balance and that three-bedroom house and that car in the porch and the steady interest on the savings and the gratuity, and they are shaped by the same cookie cutter.
You wanted to be different, remember, grab the stars, go for it, buy a tractor, entrepreneurship, consultancy, become an NGO, fight the good fight, survive by your wits, a life spent staying one step ahead of the chaser.
And you look back now and you find an irritating thought creeping in. Would you take that leap of faith again or stay on the bus?
Was it a mistake to opt for the excitement of the novel instead of hanging in there and being facelessly one of the pack, another cog in the wheel?
You always have an answer. Doesn't matter if your bus lost its way because you were the driver, not a passenger, and it is one life and that is what matters.
wknd@khaleejtimes.com