My Struggle With Standing Up…

I gleefully jumped in the air and announced my SSC results to my mother, and told her that I had scored a 90.81% irrespective of all the taunts and discouragement from my elders and teachers.

Who knew that, that momentary feeling of pride, achievement and invincibility was going to be crushed in the coming two years.

We all decide some path or the other we intend to take related to our careers after a certain age, it was when I was 13 years old, I proudly declared to my mother, that I will become a doctor. Firstly, the conditioning that I was exposed to was, that doctors and engineers have a lot of respect in our society and secondly my elder brother is an engineer. So somewhere I wanted to be a doctor, ofcourse my curiosity towards biology and the intricacies of our bodies remained the primary propelling force.

But what if the decision that you confidently took when you were a young kid, starts tearing you apart bit by bit? What if the dream that you dreamt of, so vividly stops nourishing your soul? What if it traps you in a small cubic classroom for about 7 hours a day, where you fail to focus on what the teacher is teaching you? Where the administration of your classes feeds your parents the daunting facts about the limited seats in medical colleges? Where they tell you to forget your social life, sports, functions etc for the next two years? Where they talk about making these sacrifices to attain your so called great goal of becoming a doctor?

At times in life, we do face certain situations where we realize that maybe the path we are wanting to walk is not for us. We don’t realize it when we walk a few miles, it is after a long hike that we suddenly realize that this isn’t it. The biggest fear which arises then, is the acceptance that we don’t belong here. Then the embarrassment of declaration to your close ones and the world that you made a very big mistake, a mistake that cost sweat, money and undirected efforts. A mistake that made you build castles in mid-air..

Such was my situation.

But that is the thing you see, sooner or later I was forced to stand-up. I had to stop living a lie and it only happened when I turned inward. Only then could I understand and accept that I wasn’t going where I wanted to go. It was through acceptance; that courage sprouted out and I told my parents that I don’t want to give my medical entrance examination and that I don’t feel fit nor do I feel am capable to do the necessary justice to this field. It is big humungous daunting task, standing up to your parents who are conditioned as per the norms and expectations of the society. Yes, people laughed, my parents still taunt me sometimes and address their displeasure about me not trying harder. I struggled a lot with guilt, shame and an inner-sense of incompetence, a feeling of being a loser, which still often encapsulates me during certain times.

But now I will tell you what I learnt through this process, what happened when I actually stood up for myself.

1] I realized when to push and where to push in terms of the various spectrums of my life.

2] I realized no dream has the right to hamper my peace of mind, to turn me into a frustrated, sad, anxious person.

3] No degree, no achievement, no honor nor any kind of respect or status is going to quench the thirst of my heart.

4] I realized accepting one’s incompetence in something isn’t really being incompetent but genuinely is building a sense of harmony and integrity within. A fish is really not incompetent in flying you see, it’s just that its strength simply doesn’t lie there.

I am pretty sure, if today I was still trying to do something for the sake of my parents, society, status, power, respect or success, I wouldn’t have been peaceful and blissful. And I am sure, if today I wouldn’t have stood up for myself, I wouldn’t have been able to publish my first book by the time I was 20 years old!! So, today when I look in hindsight, I do see everything falling in place, in ways that are unimaginably beautiful and minutely intricate…