Written by Soujanya Hiremath
What do you want to become when you grow up? What is your aim? What are your dreams? — these are the questions which we all have been asked at some point in our lives. With no cognizance of our aims and dreams, we are often obliged to choose a path and surrender to it. While we detest the decisions we made without our knowledge, we now realize that not everyone gets to fulfil the wishes of their younger self.
It all began from our childhood where we learnt to see success as some person or a thing instead of seeing it as ourselves at best. What we want to be and what we want, apparently are our wishes derived from what others are and what they seem to have. And at that point what we often forget is we are others to someone else too. Somebody, somewhere, desires to be you or wishes to have what you have. Aim need not be one. You may have to trespass many other goals in order to reach one goal. Striving hard in what we have chosen, failing and rising. With every failure wanting to quit and with every rise wanting to continue again and again, we reach a neutral zone. A zone where we no longer want to quit nor want to continue but just be happy. It is then we realize that aim is neither a person nor a thing but that what makes one come out of their zone with nothing but a wish to be happy.
It is no secret to us that continuously trying to excel at something is accompanied by the inevitable failure.
The fear of failure and the regret of our decision somehow takes us to the edge making us lose confidence. In our daily life, we feel failed in many ways, be it scoring less marks, losing, or even being physically or mentally weak. But none of these define failure as much as failing to accept the failure does. The fear of failure is nothing but an indication that we are only one step away from happiness. Which can never be reached but can only be taken as a lead. The most helpless and hopeless times have the sharpest rays of hope.
Throwing out the fear of failure brings us to the next phase, the phase of ambivalence. When we are smiling and crying at the same time for the same cause. The enlightenment of why we chose what we chose, giving a meaning to our highs and lows. Making us stronger than we ever were. It is something that Paulo Coelho calls as the ‘personal calling’. It is a call from oneself that guides to a path realizing one’s dreams. Although it is the best way of realisation, not many are patient enough to reach this stage. It takes many wrong decisions, uncountable failures and a great amount of strength of losing one’s fear to encounter one’s personal calling.
A constant change subjected to us, creates a total havoc in our minds and it is that insanity making us sane. The mind is the master of all, they say. But that master when becomes a slave to something else, creating a disturbance in our little mind only tells us how fragile a human mind is. From building castles to breaking dreams, from creating hell to heavens, it is in our minds we dwell. Even the greatest enigma of all- our mind, couldn’t master this complexity. The more we believe, the more we act. The more we act, the more we get. The more we get, the more we work. The more unstoppable you become the more your deeds echo through the skies, only then you know the true meaning of life which goes hand in hand with the meaning of death. After all, what we humans need is an answer to all our “why’s”. And once we find answers we find peace.
“The Brain—is wider than the sky—for put them side by side—the one the other will contain with ease—and you—beside”, – Emily Dickinson, c. 1862
There might be somewhere you wish to be, there might be something you wish to do, there might be someone you want to be. But here’s what you have, it’s now, today and present. Indeed it’s a reality.
