Friend #49 - Zain
My frosh leader
A few weeks ago, I was sitting with Mr. Shaw, Friend #19 over coffee at a Richmond Hill café reviewing my piece for my final two friends. “To completely understand your work, people need to understand that you’re whimsical,” he tells me.
“When I write, it’s like I’m in a movie,” I reply.
“I know that but I fear that other people won’t,” he says.
Sometimes I wonder who I appear as to strangers. When I met Zain in 2015, I thought he was the most confident man in the world. Two years my senior, he was my frosh leader during my first week of university.
He loudly led a group of students through games and adventures in the city but when we met for coffee, though still kind and talkative, I was painted a slightly different picture. “I’ve struggled with my self-confidence,” he says. “With imposter syndrome and with trying to be perfect.”
Zain goes on to explain that the consulting industry where he began his career is very competitive and confesses that it was difficult to adjust to the working world after university especially since he had never worked as a student.
Ultimately, it was his time as a theatre kid in high school that showed him the value of knowing how to play the right character for each scene. “At the core, I’m the same but I can show up well in social settings, for example,” he says.
As a former drama student myself, I completely understand. In high school, or even when I began working, I had classmates or colleagues who were shocked that the girl who sat quietly at her desk could captivate an entire audience.
“We’ll always have certain insecurities,” he says. “Some you embrace, some you address and others that bother you.”
The start of 2020 led Zain to move back in with his parents which was followed by a period of great reflection. “I had to really think about my behaviour and what I need to do better,” he says.
Then he wed last year. “It’s like having a mirror in front of you every day and every night and it increases the pace of improvement. It’s easier to improve. That’s why it’s important to choose the right friends and the right relationship,” he says.
Currently, Zain works for Google and spent time on the News and Publishing team. He worries about how the next generation in particular will be affected by social media and the mental health consequences that will come with that.
“It can desensitize us to information,” he says. “In a single scroll, we may see something about the new Barbie movie and then read about global boiling.”
He deleted social media after concluding that he was spending hours a day focusing on information that was unnecessary. “It’s nice to see what everyone is up to but I’d focus on the 80% of people that I spend 20% of my time thinking about instead of the people who are actually central in my life,” he says.
“Spending time on social media isn’t time for yourself,” he continues.
We discuss our time in undergrad as business students and how we noticed that students often felt obliged to attach to certain communities to build on their identity. “There was this need to say, ‘I want to be an accountant or consultant,’ when everyone has their own path,” says Zain.
“As we grow conviction in our beliefs, we want to be with people who share our beliefs and values,” he says.
There is a certain satisfaction that comes with knowing that we’ve seen, we’ve tried but we’re choosing to remain true to ourselves.
“If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life but what I will call the artistic life, if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward.”
―Oscar Wilde
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