Life’s never easy. It’s always been about survival of the fittest. Failures are inevitable part of our lives. It keeps coming and going. Sometimes, we pay a heavy price when we fail. But, in-turn it gives us an experience to learn. To learn from our failures is one of the most important lessons life teaches us every moment. The bigger point is that what we learn from our mistakes, we should be able to apply those.
Farthest down my memory lane, I recall that I had failed in English in first standard in school. In the academics, this was my very first encounter with a failure. Then, I failed in social sciences in standard fifth, I think. I failed in English again in standard eighth. I failed to reach my expectations in tenth board. I failed to do well in twelfth board. I failed to qualify for jee twice. I almost failed in physics in my undergrad twice. I failed to do good in sports at any level, however like and interest I developed. I failed to get a good job. At one moment, I had thought have I failed to make my career? What wrong choices have I made? I failed to get into a grad school. Yes, I was rejected by OSU, but later they got some new openings and then I was offered a place. And, yet again, I failed after entering in grad school. I was perplexed to see clearly if I had applied the things I had learned from my past failures. In my personal life, I don’t recall many such things, which impacted me the most. Probably, their impact on my career is not observable, but somehow they must have affected my persona, psychologically maybe. When I was appearing for my tenth board exam, my mother was fighting with death in a hospital. When she had acute blood shortage due to heavy internal bleeding, the doctors called for me to get some blood, but other family members didn’t even let me know the situation, fearing it might impact my exam. My father ran umpteenth times to many people, to the red-cross, to arrange for the required amount of blood. I know even if I had failed in the tenth board, my family members would have had sympathy with me. The other experience I remember is when I was in freshmen year at R and I had a crush on one of my good friend. Probably, she was the only girl whom I knew well. I kept on becoming stupid and desperate. That was one time when I was ignoring the lessons, I had been learning every day. One day, she bid me adieu. I had cried. A lot. It took me some time to get over her. But, I had learned a lesson to keep your crush away from friendship. I had thought I would not repeat it. But, I didn’t know that there was a fear in me, which had made me sick enough and if uncovered I will be that stupid again. And then, a day came when, I actually “celebrated” two failures; career as well as personal life. I fell in love again with a good friend. I feared to lose her. I did stupid things. She started hating me. I had thought she will hate me for life. I had cried. I had cried much more than I had in my whole life beyond infancy. And I was not even over with this shock, I had another shock. It took me sometime, to really understand what was going wrong in me this time. I tried to wake myself up and become better. I am proud of the feelings I have for her, but I have learned another lesson to lower my expectations. I needed a push in my life to get it going further, it came a hard way. I hope that these lessons, I will not, overlook again. I hope that, a better me will keep becoming better, learning from its own failures.
