Friday 28 February 2014

mind over matter

I find it rather interesting that men and women are as obsessed with ends as they are with beginnings. They set their foot on a great adventure and they are all upbeat about it. When things get hard and the true chance of reveal oneself comes out, they shy away, party out of the fear of failure, but mostly out of the fear of succeeding. Everyone talks about fear of failure and so everyone knows about it. I think its the fear of success and its price that truly frightens us.

When we imagine the best versions of ourselves, it is undoubtedly elusive and spectacular, but deep  in our hearts, it is scary. It is scary because it is the truth and it so happens that the old saying are accurate and here to stay. If something is hurting you deep deep down, chances are that it is the truth. The truth is bitter and more often than not, we are scared of confronting the truth because it involves the risk of finding out that one thing that we would hate to see.

Life is about failing. It is rightly said that if you have never failed, you have never lived. If you look at the big picture and pure maths, despite the aversion of many to the subject; 7 billion people live on this planet. If you choose a vocation and set a great target for yourself and give it everything that you have got, what are your chances of success? What is the chance that you will be amazing at what you do and your career path is set for life? Well, I say it is pretty damn slim. And this is not because of anything, but the simple fact that only when you eliminate all the impossible, whatever remains no matter how improbable must be the truth. My point is that life happens. Sometimes, we fail despite our best efforts.

I tend not to divulge into religion as I think I do not know enough about it to even bring it into the picture, but it could be that this is God's way of grounding us. A loss and its realisation comes in stages. If you are a proud man not used to a lot of failure, there will be the "hubris of the defeated" phase. Time will heal you and bring you to the ground till the time you realise that you come to this earth with nothing and you will inevitably go with nothing. Of what use is your success and wealth and stardom if it didn't truly touch the life of an individual.

I am not preaching failure, I am only saying that it is not the end, only a beginning. It gives us what we have always been obsessed about i.e. a new beginning.  This is the way things can happen. This is the way that there will be a new vitality in you when you restart.

Systems change only after they are broken. Your failure has a reason and your reason has a root. Dig deep enough and you will find why you did fail. Remember that success tastes good, but our desires as human beings are insatiable. One success is like us catching a big fish in the pond, but the next time, the fish would have to be bigger to satisfy out basic human need.

Nothing cannot be reversed if you have the heart to do it. JK Rowling's book was rejected by 28 publishers. What if she gave up at the 27th publisher? What if she never wrote the wonderful books she did. What if...

With quite a bit of conviction, I can say that the 'what-if' state of mind is the weakest state of mind if it is stagnant. If it becomes progressive, there is still hope. Unfortunately, if dreamers keep dreaming and convince themselves that dreaming in itself will have a physical manifestation, then they are terribly mistaken.

I don't know how I must end this. This has been a sequence of thoughts straight out of my head. If I were to wrap up with something, I would say, using the words of Earl Nightingale: I have brought myself by a long meditation to the conviction that a man with a settled purpose must accomplish it and that nothing can resist a will that will stake even existence for its fulfillment.