Forged in fire
Hello Readers,
It has again been a long hiatus since I poured my thoughts onto your screen and mine. In between taking trips to explore new places and missing cut offs by the smallest and painful margins, not much has changed. I hope life has been treating you with authenticity as that seems to be a lost cause in today’s pretentious and opportunistic world.
I bring to you bearing my experiences of travelling to different cities in Uttar Pradesh a month and a half before. I travelled as extensively as our schedule would have allowed through the cities of Banaras now Varanasi, Ayodhya and Allahabad now Prayagraj. Much to my expectations sadly, I was disappointed especially with Banaras. The Ganga Aarti is hyped with the ghats packed with swarms of people upto a point it makes one suffocated and completely devoid of spirituality. For a moment I almost blamed my privileged self of not adjusting well to minor inconveniences. But quickly that thought disappeared when everyone in my family concurred with my opinion about the ghats being far from pleasant. At times of confusion, my family has always magically appeared to my rescue and their’s is the only opinion I carefully consider even before mine. Not because of typicality, but because their version of reality is far more nuanced, pragmatic and appeals to my senses much more than anyone else’s.
Readers, I will maybe put up another blog post describing my travelogues through the ancient and relatively newer cities of UP, but the matter of this blog post is slightly different. The other day I was telling a friend that it does us no good to sulk over things which have not gone our way when we have taken decisions after carefully considering the opportunity costs. If we were ready to reap the bounty of our risk taking, fear mongering decisions, then we also need to develop the resilience to handle when things go south and it results in a bad investment. As humans obviously we will feel sad, cry, vent about it for a few days to a few friends and eventually make an effort to find better alternatives. But that is not enough.
Readers, with the little bit of experience and exposure that I have had in life, I believe only being optimistic is not the solution. Should we believe in a better future? Absolutely. Is that enough? Not so much. I think we can truly find peace with any of our endeavours if in the aggregate we believe that it will do us good. The word “aggregate” is important. Sometimes we take risks based on our intuition, our potential or simply because the opportunity arises. But no risk can guarantee a positive outcome and immediate failures has tremendous capacity to strip us off our self confidence and self esteem. That is why besides using positive coping tools to develop resilience, it is essential that we believe that the lessons learnt, both good and bad are not in vain. “The aggregate result will always be in our favour”. If we do not take a leap of faith with this idea, we are sure to find ourselves perched upon an unknown shore, staring at strangers and unable to communicate our feelings.
Readers, I hope you find authentic people to guide and show you the light. As much as there is goodness in the world, keep a look out for the opportunistic ones. They will sugarcoat you to a level that will make you complacent and strip you off your own imagination. The genuine ones will never shy away from telling you the truth even if it does not appeal to your senses. That’s your cue.
Until next time, Readers❤️
