A Tell-a-Tale Heart

Much is changing. Much has changed. Much will change. I have been in this same situation before. The last time I left the green doors of something equally endearing, I promised myself that I would return someday. I reassured myself constantly that one morning some nostalgic urge would motivate me to get the next shuttle and walk on those same cobbled paths that had hosted me for 12 years — at least once more. But I never returned.

Oblivity is a sin most memories are not immune to. Looking back at these 21 years that have passed at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience, all of us at some point were striking an uneasy balance between the ambition they had for themselves, and what their closest expected of them. What I feared most for myself at this age was not that I would not secure a good job and earn less money, but failure. Failure entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of failure by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but failure itself is romanticized only by fools. As my undergraduate degree will tell you : Failure was not securing a seat in IIT. Failure was not getting into a top NIT. Failure was letting down everyone who had expectations from me. No one wanted to listen to me or my excuses. I was an excuse and that was Failure. I am not dull enough to suppose that my peers are young, gifted and well-educated, they have never known hardships or what it is to work constantly and yet keep failing. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone other than me has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment. Neither through this tirade, should you once assume that I have spent more hours under the midnight candle than any of my peers.

4 years back, to me, personally, failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. Once I entered college, I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to work towards success in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized — — and I was still alive and I had 4 years of amazing college life ahead of me. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. I was sure that there was not going to be any kind of resolution at the end of the tunnel. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it seemed a distant hope. Like me, you might be driven by failures more than the desire for success. My friends have always cajoled me by saying that “ your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown.”

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. Someone had said “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all — in which case, you fail by default.”

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected. The knowledge that you gain helps you emerge wiser. After facing setbacks you realize that you are secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.

So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 18-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV are not your life : Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and only you can trust yourself to survive its vicissitudes. I am done for now — for this note and my undergraduate degree. Hope to meet you soon in a better place and better time !