Does Life really ever challenge us?

 2074th BLOG POST

Well, the only work you have when you fall sick is to think about your past or future. I am currently suffering with cold which made me take a day-off from work yesterday. While I was not able to get out of my bed due to weakness, I was thinking of the job change that I have made recently and everything felt so scary - managing the new work, new stakeholders, new team members, new environment blah blah blah! It made me think of all the uncomfortable times I have lived in past. While thinking of all such times when I was in comfort or panic, I realized that the cycle continued in every few years or months in my life. Not only mine, but while I was also thinking about my parents’ life which I have closely observed, I could understand the challenges that even they have to go through- either financially, physically or mentally.

 

I am at an age where I have already lived half of my life. I am just going to live around the same years- or maybe even less. It makes me realize how time has passed in a flick. It makes me go through all the great and foolish decisions I have taken to reach where I am. I remember when I was in school, how traumatic it was to see the kind of pressure everyone had built around 10^th board exam. I knew that I won’t score much because I felt everything was above my IQ level. Because I had decided this initially itself, I couldn’t manage to score even what I deserved to achieve.

 

My junior college days were one of the terrible years of my life. Going through extremely tough times where I was both- mentally and physically ill due to major incidents in my life which changed me forever. It was just 4 months remaining for the board exams when I decided to give my best shot and score whatever I can even if I fail. I did everything I could- ignored mobile phone, friends, television and all sorts of entertainment. With the grace of God, I passed the exam with marks more than I had expected.

 

After passing 12^th, it seemed that I can’t do great in graduation. It felt that I would not even get admission. I ended up getting admitted in one of the popular colleges in my city. In the last year, it again seemed that the Common Entrance Test was out of my zone and I won’t be able to do post-graduation easily. Once again, I got admission in the very first round. Finally, when I took up my first job which again seemed like a herculean task to get, I got to know that the projects are being developed for India’s leading Insurance brokers. I didn’t know anything about Insurance. I thought I won’t be able to make through the probation period. I got 3 promotions in less than 5 years in that organization.

 

Similarly, when I left the organization and found another job in Work-from-home model, I had given up on the fact that I could understand the project sitting at home by just talking with someone on call. Once again, I made through and got a promotion which gave me the tag of Manager- something I had not even aspired for. Now, as I had mentioned in the very first paragraph, I have left even this job recently and joined a new one- a subsidiary of one of the biggest entities of India. I knew that the new domain will be tough to grasp which I am currently struggling with. Once again, I am out of my comfort zone. Once again, I am at a place where it seems my ship is sinking. Once again, I feel vulnerable. Once again, I feel I might disappoint myself.

 

But when the body gave up to this seasonal change and I got to lie quietly and think of all such moments in my life when I had given up but still got up to give whatever I could to not only survive but try to carve my identity in a new environment, I was able to achieve the tough target. I know I am at a job which is not satisfactory at a moment but I realize that I could make it one if I don’t think too much about failure but only success. When we put all our efforts and strive for bettering ourselves, we prove ourselves time and again that we can win anything that comes our way. I know we also lose few races in this journey but all leads to one place in the end if we are committed and true to ourselves- VICTORY.

 

No matter what, if there’s a belief that there’s a lot more potential within us which we have still not capitalized, we try to unlock our inner strength and bring it into play. Once we are in the gaming zone, we know that our job is to just keep hitting bullets without worrying about multiple of them coming towards us from multiple directions. It helps us understand that we are made for bigger things because that’s how the nature functions. The world has come from stone-age era to this present world where technology has become a key to survive. This has happened only because the human beings at every stage gave their best to fight against the status quo and achieved something better. We have to just do what billions and trillions of people have kept doing this since millions of years on this planet. That’s our default settings. There’s no new task assigned to us – at any phase in our lives. It’s as normal as breathing which we do without even thinking about it.

 

I am writing this because I want to believe in this phenomenon once again when I conquer the current challenge. I want to read this again after I am done with hiking this mountain to understand how life plays the same game repeatedly making us believe that it’s a new and difficult one this time. Let’s see 😊

 

Thanks!

 

WRITING BUDDHA