WHEN YOU LOSE YOUR WAY...

Pic.Sherry Haridas

“Sometimes when you lose your way, you find YOURSELF.”
― Mandy Hale

In my last Post, I had written: why discovering what we love to do in life is the key to our confidence and well-being. I had shared the story of young Prachi*, who wanted to regain her self-confidence by following her heart.

I am a staunch believer in the theory of ‘Doing-what-we-love’ or ‘Loving-what-we-do’ in life. I, myself, was a lost young-man till I arrived at my first-year degree college. Then, something happened – and I am never tired or ashamed of telling it, again and again. My idol Prof. Raman came to our class to teach us... and, I ‘found’ myself for the first time in my life: I wanted to be a fine teacher like him. After that, no one had to remind me how hard I had to work, what sacrifices I had to make, what additional books I had to read, what additional skills I had to build, who I had to befriend and who I had to shun... Yes, mom, dad and all others were now out of the picture... Between me and my success there stood none, except my burning desire and dogged determination.

A teacher?

Looking back at those uneventful and ‘wandering’ years - just before I had become a ‘Buddha’ - I simply smile. I was so bad in studies and so uninformed as well. My social skills were poor... I was filled with fear and anxiety about life... I was terrible in English language... And, now, the day I got my calling in life, everything about me changed... With that one, resounding ‘YESSS’, I had gotten hold of my lost confidence and rekindled my dying spirit.

So, whoever has lost his way in life, I tell them, “Blessed are you!” I tell them what Mandy Hale told:

“Sometimes, when you lose your way, you find YOURSELF.”

There was one more proof in waiting for me. Late, last evening, a gentleman called me up from Punjab. He had just read my last Post and wanted to share with me the story of his own college-going daughter who studied here in Mumbai. I had taught this girl in F.Y.B’Com and realized that she was not enjoying what she had taken up in life. She would frequently miss the lectures, never do her homework, resist any attempt to change her or coax her, from any one, including parents and teachers... So much so, she would come about as arrogant. Expectedly, the girl stopped attending my classes; and, what happened after that, I had no clue.

So, yesterday, the young-girl’s father had called me, just to inform me that he fully agreed with whatever I had written in my last Post. He told me that the girl hated what she was doing and failed to give her first-year exams. She decided to switch over to Arts, where she thoroughly loved the Psychology subject. And, that was it!

Now, nobody is ‘eating her head’... Nobody is ‘worked-up’ about her future...

But, one year is wasted; isn’t it?

No sir, fifty to sixty years saved!

Life is a maze, in deed. All our life, all of us do the same thing: Leave our houses in search... And, in the end, we all come home – and find ourselves, right there. It was Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,who had first said it:

“I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there.”

* Name is changed

GERALD D’CUNHA