There will be a time when life treats you like crap. All your finely laid plans fail one-by-one and you're standing around wondering just what the hell you are going to do next, because nothing you do seems to work out. At such times, you will find that those that matter will stand by you - friends in need, indeed. And be grateful those friends - family or otherwise - because without them you'd have it much, much worse.
But a lot of them will tell you "Everything that happens, happens for the best"
This, is bullshit.
Remember this one little thing. God / Life / Nature / the flying spaghetti monster are under no obligation whatsoever to follow up something bad with something good. There is no fixed quota of "good" and "bad" things to happen to anyone from which you can deduct the number of times bad things have happened and mathematically believe that you have a greater chance of something good happening.
You will have only three choices to pick from: you either try whatever you were doing once more; you try to find a new way of doing it or you give up and find something else to do.
The last option there seems like anathema to most of us - we've all been brought up on the legend of King Bruce and the Spider. You remember it? The one where the king hides in a cave after losing a battle, and watches a spider repeatedly trying to climb a wall and failing a number of times before it reaches the ceiling. The moral of the story ostensibly is "If at first you don't succeed, try and try and try again."
King Bruce was an idiot. Oh sure, it is all right when you're a spider climbing a cave. Spiders don't have much more to do in life than weave webs. And it is all fine if you're a king, when you have enough men under you to throw at an enemy over and over and over till your enemy runs out of soldiers and you don't. But it doesn't always work. Sometimes you may have an obvious flaw that needs fixing and things will turn around for you; but quite often there are things you cannot see and people you cannot control that are permanent obstacles in your path.
Cutting your losses and moving to a different objective in life is no shame, never mind what certain orthodox-minded people believe. Our society place too much faith in rigid and single yardsticks to define "success" and "failure". 10th std exams, 12th std, doing IT / Medicine / CIMA and then landing a job in a company that everyone has heard of. Anything else is greeted with a disinterested "oh". And god forbid, if you don't do well in the mainstream courses, or decide to do something different, they look at you as if you've lost your mind.
Well, tell that to N, who was treated like crap by his profs in college - so much so that he quit. Don't ask him how much he makes now though, you'd need to have a Masters degree to match his pay. Or R, who hated engineering so much that he did not attend college, and wasn't allowed to sit for his exams. And now is doing rather well, in a different field altogether. Or A, who flunked his tenth AND twelfth board exams four years ago - and now has won an ad design competition for amateurs across Europe, the prize for which has paid his tuition fees in his Master's course. Or the two guys in the band, who gave up their jobs to work with music.
All of them figured out when to say "Enough" to whatever it was that was causing them pain. There is so much stigma attached to "dropping out" that we seem to have missed one thing: quite often staying the course is far worse than finding something different to do. It also is a lesson that just because society thinks something is the norm, it doesn't mean it is good for you.
The Gambler in the song did say "Know when to hold on, know when to fold up, know when to walk away, know when to run." If you come across something that is stopping you from enjoying yourself, find another way to do it or find something else. Life's too short to be spent banging your head against concrete walls.
But a lot of them will tell you "Everything that happens, happens for the best"
This, is bullshit.
Remember this one little thing. God / Life / Nature / the flying spaghetti monster are under no obligation whatsoever to follow up something bad with something good. There is no fixed quota of "good" and "bad" things to happen to anyone from which you can deduct the number of times bad things have happened and mathematically believe that you have a greater chance of something good happening.
You will have only three choices to pick from: you either try whatever you were doing once more; you try to find a new way of doing it or you give up and find something else to do.
The last option there seems like anathema to most of us - we've all been brought up on the legend of King Bruce and the Spider. You remember it? The one where the king hides in a cave after losing a battle, and watches a spider repeatedly trying to climb a wall and failing a number of times before it reaches the ceiling. The moral of the story ostensibly is "If at first you don't succeed, try and try and try again."
King Bruce was an idiot. Oh sure, it is all right when you're a spider climbing a cave. Spiders don't have much more to do in life than weave webs. And it is all fine if you're a king, when you have enough men under you to throw at an enemy over and over and over till your enemy runs out of soldiers and you don't. But it doesn't always work. Sometimes you may have an obvious flaw that needs fixing and things will turn around for you; but quite often there are things you cannot see and people you cannot control that are permanent obstacles in your path.
Cutting your losses and moving to a different objective in life is no shame, never mind what certain orthodox-minded people believe. Our society place too much faith in rigid and single yardsticks to define "success" and "failure". 10th std exams, 12th std, doing IT / Medicine / CIMA and then landing a job in a company that everyone has heard of. Anything else is greeted with a disinterested "oh". And god forbid, if you don't do well in the mainstream courses, or decide to do something different, they look at you as if you've lost your mind.
Well, tell that to N, who was treated like crap by his profs in college - so much so that he quit. Don't ask him how much he makes now though, you'd need to have a Masters degree to match his pay. Or R, who hated engineering so much that he did not attend college, and wasn't allowed to sit for his exams. And now is doing rather well, in a different field altogether. Or A, who flunked his tenth AND twelfth board exams four years ago - and now has won an ad design competition for amateurs across Europe, the prize for which has paid his tuition fees in his Master's course. Or the two guys in the band, who gave up their jobs to work with music.
All of them figured out when to say "Enough" to whatever it was that was causing them pain. There is so much stigma attached to "dropping out" that we seem to have missed one thing: quite often staying the course is far worse than finding something different to do. It also is a lesson that just because society thinks something is the norm, it doesn't mean it is good for you.
The Gambler in the song did say "Know when to hold on, know when to fold up, know when to walk away, know when to run." If you come across something that is stopping you from enjoying yourself, find another way to do it or find something else. Life's too short to be spent banging your head against concrete walls.
1 comments:
This is a good one. Good advice. I applied these in my life. it worked for me.
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