Disbelief

I can’t believe its me who is thinking what I am thinking - I am unhappy for another person’s achievement!

Me?! I don’t do that!!

No! It is not really the achievement. That is no matter. I think what affects me is - that nervous excitement in applying to a place where one in fact stands a chance of getting through. That filling up of forms and writing SOPs and putting your best foot forward all the while hearing your supporters cheering your victory in your head.  That tingling anxiety in the stomach while waiting for the application to be processed and making it sound like no big deal to all sundry who ask about it. That final moment of reckoning when the heart sinks into the stomach, the forehead is smeared with perspiration and the heart beats terrifyingly fast while you key in your roll number. You want that god damn result, alright. But. But, you need some time to go to it. However, that would be no more than the time it would take to key in those 8 digits.

With every nano second that passes by, you have flipped that coin mentally ten times over and reconciled with every possible permutation of the result. You have been realistic, have thought of the worst case scenario, wanted the best anyway and at the same time are willing to be open to accept whatever may flash on the screen.

Press “ENTER.”

…

Nay! It really doesn’t matter what appears on the screen. It was the chase. An honest push, pull and squat! The rush and gush of it.

You’ll win some and you’ll lose some. [On a different note - People who say that they hate losing, think about what needs to be done when your body acts like a hibernating animal and stores flubber. (not just for winter, Summer too!) Ah, you say you would let your body go so far as to become a polar bear, think what if you broke your leg and couldn’t exercise when that happened. You say, you wouldn’t come close to something as reckless as that? What the hell will you say about global warming?!!]

Get the point, you, right?

There’ll be times when you alone can make or break things. It’s in having faith in yourself to do what you think you can do. That’s when you go deaf to all else that is said. When that conviction permeates though every nerve and sinew in the body which then lunges toward that end. Your being is chiseled with confidence so fine that clearing the bar matter less. You clear the bar anyways. But that is incidental to the greater aspiration that has been fulfilled. You just remain to marvel at the finesse and grace you’ve come to acquire in the pursuit.

When the end counts for little, the acquisition of the end can’t pique me. It is not  achievement that bothers me then. Pray, what is it?!

Happiness. That contentment that arises of having made it. Where one feels one’s worth was measured to scale, Where the ‘I’ bows to the very many other ‘I’s that contributed. And you feel compelled to thank them.

No. It is not happiness that I am jealous about. All respect to the humility that one acquires with achievement and due appreciation for the same.

What? What then is it that bothers me?

WHAT?!

That is it. Celebration. It is the making merry of that consummate moment when all in the universe has decided to favour you. You have acknowledged that bounty and celebrated to thank it.

I am a blighted me that I trudged that moment down in uncalled for agony and an undeserved modesty. It became unsvoury to acknowledge - to receive the congratulatory. To hide and blanket was compelling. The light I deliberately shunned, for want of greater wisdom, i.e. in my foolishness, berates me to date. And so it bother me when I see someone do what I missed on doing.

I killed ‘my present’ at the guillotine of my imagined ‘ideal’. So, I have to pay the price when my ideal of myself is challenged by my reality of me. Where I can’t imagine it is me who is thinking what I am thinking!