The Beginning That Looks Like The End

I consider not jumping back from failure a bigger failure in itself

After writing 3 long blogs based on academia, I felt like satiating my urge of writing something different. While I do write about this topic, I am sure some might feel, “He is just 20 years old. What life has he seen?” And I am not going to pacify their thought system with any argument whatsoever. However, I am a strong believer of,

Age is just a number, experience is all that matters.

And that nobody can exactly quantify and qualitatively judge what you feel and go through within. I leave the rest to your judgment.

We all, at some point in our life, might have come across a situation where everything just seems to fall apart for you. Where all you see in front of you is NOTHING. Be it a job rejection, a death of a near and dear one, a broken relationship, a failure in wanting to become or do something, or just among the million other things that could happen under the sky, we have all been at the other end. I have been too. That’s what makes this blog special.

I am a very ambitious and passion-driven person. I go all out for things I want in life and somewhere it backfired. I strongly used to believe that results and hard work had a very direct and strong relationship. But then, we have exceptions to every theory. Sometimes, even giving your best isn’t enough to push you through the finishing line and that’s life. Sometimes, you gotta find peace in the fact that you gave your best.

2018–19 was a tough year for me personally in more than one way. And when I look back at it, I can’t be more thankful to that phase of my life. I was just recovering from a broken relationship when I decided to contest elections for a post I wanted to be at, right from my freshman year. Now, if you know me, you know what it meant to me and how driven I was to be there.

Just like any other election would be, this one had its own rigor. For 2 straight months, all that I had on my mind was this (and frequent remembrances of my relationship, not to forget). I kept convincing myself that this election could finally be a fresh start for me in what I would call an ongoing dull life. Sleepless nights, meeting hundreds of people, drafting manifestos, reviewing them, proof checking them and what not! Come election day, the results went against my favor. And much to my pleasure or displeasure (I wasn’t able to decipher which one at that moment of time) I lost by a margin of one vote. (Is that even a margin? It seemed like the infinitesimal small element of calculus)

Painful? Nah! Heart-wrenching, agonizing, and distasteful to say the least. What seemed like the only light at the end of the tunnel for me was gone. I feel the biggest lacuna in our society is that it never taught us, humans, to deal with failure. So what happens when we fail, when we reach a dead-end and when all the negativity takes charge?

We try to stay afloat, somehow. We desperately try to cling onto things for support and then just as if we didn’t know how to swim through it, we wait and wait for someone to come and pull us out of the mess, and we say hope is eternal. Albeit every hand lent is a temporary relief, there is no lifeguard who is gonna pull you all out.

It is you, you and only you who is going to pull yourself out of the mess.

Every setback in life requires it’s own individual recovery

I did the mistake of harping onto another event in life to let go off the other. Never do that! Everything is going to cascade like a domino if things don’t work out well at any one point of time. So, I was left with an enormous task of dealing with myself. I had paid no attention to academics, I lost the one thing I wanted the most in college, I didn’t have the person I wanted to be with, by my side and I had no idea where my life was heading. I was tired of living off other’s validations and judgments and I had had enough. Luckily for me, by the time I lost my elections, I had identified the pattern of emotions that one feels and it helped me move on from my loss quicker.

1. Denial

I guess every human naturally drifts to this chain of feelings. To start off, one just can’t accept that fate had it this way. We tend to live in denial and question the happening.

Why me? I put in my best, this couldn’t happen to me.

This thought often tends to lead people to question their own capabilities. Self-doubt is a very dangerous thing to harbor and one should eliminate it the moment the scale tips to this side.

2. Anger

You naturally hate what happened to you. You might get angry with yourself, a third person, or with the situation, based on the circumstances you are in. I had come to a point where I had started hating a few people in my life and with time, I just realized what I was doing. Let me tell you, it is futile wasting energy and adding negativity to your life for something that is past you. While it was a great effort to subdue this feeling even for me, the moment you realize what it’s doing to your system, it becomes easier to deal with it.

3. Depression

Sadness kicks in after anger has drained you of all your energy. Flashbacks of the event is a pretty common thing to experience in this stage. You’re full of remorse throughout the day and even the jolliest thing doesn’t seem to lighten your mood. I am not saying it is necessary for you to go through these stages, but if you are, identify them and push yourself to the next step. It is easy to come out of this phase and all you have to do is accept the fact that ‘XYZ event has happened in your life’. As crazy as I might sound, I used to tell myself in a very reassuring way, “Adit, what’s happened has happened. This too shall pass.”

4. Acceptance

Things get easier here on. They say acceptance is the first step to getting out of the rut completely. You are no longer debating the event and have accepted it peacefully. The aftermath doesn’t disturb you anymore. People talking about the specific event has very little effect on you. One starts introspecting and working on their selves here on. What went wrong and what could have been done better. I had a lot many people say a lot many things about me during my elections. While one should take feedback from people, beware about the difference between constructive criticism and criticism. There is a very thin line separating them. While criticism can assassinate your character for you in your mind, constructive criticism has a totally different vibe around it.

5. Progress

I used to read several people’s experiences online and even discuss with people about their journey around such events in their life. And what disappointed me the most was the inability of people to make a better self of them after having gone through all of the pain. I am not sure about how many people reach this threshold, but I had reached mine. I was done with failing and I somehow wanted to take my life back in my hands. There was a fire inside me to do something and all of it was just to prove myself my worth.

I ran for a continuous 4 hrs completing 33.3kms in an event called Runathon with no long-distance running practice whatsoever. I like to call this my ‘Revenge Run’. That day, I had proved it to myself that it was all in the head and I knew if I trained it well, I was gonna be out of this mess soon.

Days passed and I started working on myself more than ever. I scheduled my priorities and here is what it looked like:-

a) My Happiness

b) My Health

c) My career

Yes, it is alright to be selfish at times. I ventured into Finance and how! Things started getting better and I knew there was progress. You can sense that upliftment of mood and positivity spreading in your life when all your focus is on yourself.

Summing it up…

So here is how I look at it. Life is just like the above picture. We all come to a juncture in life, where we are blinded to see only one road in front of us. And in the moment, it feels like the highway to success, happiness, or wealth. We have come a long way, lifting our heavy asses to this point, and yet, as soon as things go south, all we can see is ourselves traversing the same path backward.

That one year taught me just so much, that I would like to quote a snippet I had read somewhere,

I pray for not you succeed, but for you not failing enough

It’s been almost 2 years now, and I can’t be prouder of myself honestly. It’s as if I turned onto a new leaf post that phase. After all, life is indeed about what you make out of the opportunities presented in front of you and I strongly believe that

Every time you see an end, it is just the beginning of a new journey! Just trust it :D

A personal note of thanks to Dr Mehmet Yildiz for this great initiative of Illumination. I resonate with his energy behind this vision and hope to spread inspiration among my readers in whatever way possible.

~Adit D