In school, I was a bright kid. Good marks and completed homework at all times. Never had I gone to bed with any or some of my homework incomplete. It reflected in all of my exams as well. I felt like I'm made for this. Like nothing can ever go wrong. This feeling gained more strength when I passed my 12th standard boards with exceptionally good marks, which is supposed to be a "turning point" in one's career. Now when I think about it, I guess I should have had a little taste of failure in that age.
My first rendezvous with the fact that life isn't always a cakewalk came in my first year of graduation. No one in my family is an architect so I was walking in an unchartered territory. The fact that I scored somewhere in the "higher second class" slab as people so popularly categorize it, was extremely shocking for me. I was disappointed in myself and I remember so many nights after getting my first semester results, that I had cried myself to sleep and woken up with swollen eyes and a blotched face. As the course progressed, I realized that this is poles apart from school. It is completely different, and I was doing, the efforts that I was taking were to the best of my ability. When I accepted this fact, I automatically started feeling at peace and that reflected in my grades as well. I learned to be content in my achievements in terms of marks and to concentrate more on the knowledge I could retain.
When I started working as a professional, life served with all kinds of "failures". For example, initially I considered it as a failure if my boss did not agree with my design or my client did not agree with my way of execution. I used to think I had gone wrong. I realized that design is subjective and not always, a person will feel the same as what you feel about it. That doesn't mean it's a failure. Of course, when you're working under someone you have to respect their views and change accordingly because time and finances are at steak, but it also means that you can implement your solution differently.
The point of writing this passage is that our life throws curveballs at us at any point of time. If you are a straight A kid in school, it happens that you start setting high expectations for yourself. You never really know what a failure is and when it actually hits, you think you are helpless. One day you think you have the ultimate success in your life and the next day it might happen that you'll feel everything is slipping away. And to be honest, you can never be too prepared for any of it. The key to make your life a happy one, is the way yoy deal with surprises. More often than not, your reaction to a certain situation changes the entire game. You can either wallow in sorrow and self-pity if something unfavourable and unwanted has happened, or you can pick yourself up, accept your fate and move on. Rise from the sludge and brace youself for the next storm.