Hope

Wishing for things to get better is unceasing. We keep hoping for a different future, a newer routine, another job et cetera, only to find ourselves sitting on the same bench again and again, every single day. This goes on for many years before a bulb flickers and you’re awakened to an idea that this isn’t how it’s supposed to be if you’re willing to make some effort. And this is where it gets tricky.

The effort isn’t fool-proof. You might hit a road bump and spill that ice-cream on your white shirt. If you’re cool with risks and uncertainties, this is good and you thrive as you go along, riding on the rush of not knowing where the road will take you. But if you’re anything like me who is the poster boy for risk-averse, this path might scare the s-word out of you.

The anxiety is almost physical on most days. I wake up with a clear mind that I will do most things on my list. And then come in the thoughts of doom and failure dressed in shiny yellow. They say hello, and I spend the rest of the day trying to ignore them. They’re like insurance calls; even if you block the number they’ll call you from a different one. On some days, I end up taming them and getting some work done but my fear is that the number of such days is just not enough.

I picked this lane. Nobody asked me to. I could have been on a road with less bumps. And that’s the thing about being in your late 20s, the fear of failure is very debilitating. It asks you to stop, go to bed, and just disappear. All the ‘what if’s’ somehow become negative. The tricky part is learning to live with this choice.

Another part of my brain is very chillaxed. A little too much, if you ask me. Its default mode is ‘ho jayega jo hona hoga.’ And to that my response is an internal eye-roll. It would have been better if my response were a tad bit more on the actual productivity side: like studying. These gestures while they are motivated by the right intensions achieve nothing in face of the obscure mcq’s the exam puts in front of us.

‘Yu hv gots 2 chill, bruh’ is what my saner side tells me everyday.

I should pay more heed to the above and try to find a balance. A stability between anxiety and indolence. Even if I start with a sluggish pace, I will be moving forward and that’s okay.

Have a little faith, fella.

xoxo