Fairy Dust Sparkle

When you don't have results to validate your hard work, it gets hard to even believe that it was hard work. We are conditioned to believe that hardwork is the only work that makes you lucky and pays you your due. But how far is that really true?

When you fail even your hardwork or all nighters don't mean worth shit. People look at someone with success as if they are the beacon of hope, all their lesuires turn into hard work, their faults into quirks. Sometimes all due to a moment of dumb luck. But when you hold no good result you are nothing, even your hardwork is fickle, all your value is diminished to your moment of vulnerability.

I remember Mr. Shah Rukh Khan saying," First get rich, then become a philosopher." This applies to a spectrum of courses your life might take and not just finance. When you have marks you can say that you did not study and played around but people will believe it. When you have friends or just people to vouch for you, you're good. There is no goodness in anonymity.

We are all a generation that is a repercussion of the generation that has followed and developed an entire belief system around all things unreal and magical. Generation after generation, luck is more glamorized than hardwork. Have you ever heard your mother say ," They don't study or would have gotten way better marks.", "Oh she got all that mark because luck favoured" and not because she pulled all nighters and has beat herself enough to leave bruises on her for the rest of her life. Because we all love that Bollywood style of life, the larger than life kind of life, blowing breezes and on point hair.

Because It's miraculous that way, when a topper of NEET said that they didn't study much and was engrossed in Netflix and all, it felt surreal. Like wow, it's easy. It's just a moment of fairy dust sparkle to crack the country's toughest undergraduate examination. To the people who had no prior knowledge or experience this was kind of a formula that it takes way less. I have been bashed by my parents for my marks years prior to person making the statement because I claimed to have studied.

"He didn't even study and could do better than you, what did you even do?"

It's fancy, doing nothing but having it all.

God's, even the results have been categorised. If it's good and glamorous, then only it's celebrated. No one values your pea on a corn.

No one talks about how hard it is for the 17 18 19 year olds to leave everything behind, It's of prime imperative to talk about the dark side of adulting and not just the glamorous coat of things. It's important to give the 20 somethings  the breather to experience and explore things the new way. It's important to let the 30s knows that it's not the end of the world. It's just the beginning.

It's more important to reject the entire belief system that's build around fictional stories and tooth fairies. Sometimes we work hard and still fail, sometimes everything just falls short but that doesn't mean it wasn't enough. Just because things could have been more doesn't mean they would have been better. We're humans we want more, nothing is ever going to be enough honestly. The thing you want the strongest would loose its value when you have it. You would always want to stand on the step above you.

Don't get me wrong. Ambition in no shape or form is a bad thing. It's the driving force probably, behind all our impulses. But it's also vital that we value the work, we don't fantasize and romanticise the trend of hustling hard but not sweating a drop, we need to move on from our generational trauma and deconstruct the system. It'll take time, we need to give time some time as well but we got to do it ourselves.

If we're going to admire the white coat,we must admire the fact that the person has gone through 16-18 hours of duties, somewhere they have gone 72 hours without food or bathing, have been humiliated beyond they could handle as humans. We must take inspiration from the girl with the perfect flick that she spent ages on, the boy in the fancy shirt who burnt his hand on the iron. It has to be a two way road and not just the result that gets the recognition and appreciation.

We need to realise that alongside the system of glorious luck developed another system of programming minds into believing that when they're praised, it's good. It's the last road to have everything they can ever want, happiness and contentment.

When you're trained to be happy a certain way you cannot be truly happy with the things that actually do make you feel at peace because you're so busy being guilty of breaking the cascade. Toss it and resist it's return. One day, it'll stop fighting and surrender. Keep swimming until then.

Keep swimming, Dory.

Choose the difficult path, succeed poorly in that. Take the road maimed and aged without any guilt of not being different. When everyone's special, no one will be. It's fine to just move on. It's fine to seek confidence from your failures, lessons.

I'll meet you beyond the lands of the living.

A.