An avenue underrated

How does it feel when the clock inside your head ticks faster than the clock on the wall, but the world sees your life as dormant without movement? Ask this to the students who are seriously preparing for competitive exams. They will smile. Because it is easy to smile, much easier than making others understand their states of mind. Minds that are heavied with the workload of today & uncertainties of tomorrow. Minds that are busy enough to not have time for visiting the zigzag lanes of the past. Books, notes, pdf, and lectures rule their world giving no space for entertainment. Watching movies, hanging out with friends, attending family functions, and surfing the web for long start feeling like crimes for which the future may punish them. Painting a portrait, playing a game, going to a dance class, recording a song don’t seem anymore like hobbies that can be cherished, but those come with the guilt of spending some precious time that can be invested in studying five extra pages. Holidays are not meant for rest anymore, but for lifting the syllabus to more height. The heart of an aspirant holds hope so tightly, but you can see a void in his/her eyes. A void of missing out. When the world outside is busy with partying, traveling, and celebrating life with much pump and show, they have to search for solace near their study table. Who doesn’t need a partner with whom you can enjoy the youth and grow old together? But for them, it’s better to control the hormones than to add some more load of uncertainties to life at this phase. Not completing the target of the day, scoring low in a mock test, and forgetting the concepts taught recently start feeling like mini heartbreaks to them. The sky above their heads is always clouded with anxiety. What if I fail? What if I lag from my friends? What if I don’t reach upto the expectation of my parents? What if the time & money I am investing won’t yield result? A lot of “what ifs” pierce them. But they tolerate that piercing pain and fight back so that they don’t have to deal with the most painful “could have been” in the upcoming time. Because these what-ifs can be proved wrong and turned into a positive outcome in the future. But there is no way back from the regret of not putting in some more effort, for not trying once more, for not taking the chance. Many sleepless nights pass while revising the course. Many favourite festivals pass while giving the tests. Many friends get lost, and many relatives taunt. But they don’t stop, sometimes look back, but don’t walk back. They walk towards their goals each day some miles more even after being bruised and tired. They don’t have the right to complain also because the cost of their big dreams can’t be a small amount. To join a dream college, to grab a seat in the curriculum of choice, to get a desired job, they compete. They fight. They thrive. They grow intellectually and emotionally. They do the adventure of sacrificing many pleasures of youth to crack an exam. But the world doesn’t find it right to call them ambitious or courageous. Instead, they are named droppers. The knowledge they gain in these years doesn’t get acknowledgement until and unless they succeed in that endeavour. But they know success tastes sweeter with struggle and failure doesn’t taste more bitter than the fear of trying. The ones who dream, who try, who hustle, who hope are the real achievers. The achievers whose achievements are not limited to good college, good degree and good job, but they are much beyond that. Not all eyes can visualize the beauty that is stretched towards the avenue of patience, discipline, courage, and optimism.
©ruchiabhisikta

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