Good morning my dear T-Talk Community Members………
Since we are getting to know each other now, I can confidently start confiding in you my innermost secrets – not to make it a source of gossip, but because I feel that there is something there as well worth noting and taking action.
I am sharing a personal emotion – a personal incident which I underwent when I was a teenager. In the teens, heart is young and enthusiastic and gradually you start developing a liking for the opposite sex, as in what we normally describe in today’s lingo, a “crush”. For the unknowing, a crush is a kind of brief but intense infatuation that you develop for someone.
So I also developed a crush on a girl residing near my building. We were friends and would have nice long conversations regularly and gradually before I could realize, I started feeling differently for her. My friendship feelings blossomed into something more – but at that young age, I could not comprehend the feelings and was a bit lost as to what was going on. But I realized that much that I really liked this girl – not as a casual friend, but something more than that – something I could not place a tag to describe the feelings.
Our friendship grew and we used to get along real well. We were more like buddies, sharing everything without a thought. And then that part in my heart, I guess where the feelings of love reside, started going into hyperactive mode and I started feeling the urge to express my true feelings to her. But there was something inside me, which would stop me from doing so. It was the thought at the back of my mind which would warn me “If you express your feelings and if she doesn’t like it, she will stop talking to you forever and you will lose her even as a friend”. The thought of not talking to her and not having her as a friend, stopped me from going ahead and expressing my true feelings to her at that point of time.
Time and tide wait for no man – this is something we all know. So with passage of time, we gradually developed differences and also physical distance grew as she shifted to a different suburb in Mumbai. We continued to be friends but that close rapport slowly eroded as she developed new friends in her new locality and gradually she stopped visiting our neighborhood totally.
Of course I also grew from a teenager into an adolescent kid completing his college education and preparing for the battle of life ahead. I slowly realized that what I had felt for her was perhaps infatuation or there might be some element of love as well. But either way, I did realize one thing; I had failed to take that step of expressing my feelings for her, simply out of the fear of losing her forever as a friend. I pondered over this question multiple times that, What if I had actually expressed my feelings for her at that time? What if she had heard my feelings and even reciprocated likewise? How different things would have been then? To be honest, even till date, sometimes this thought does cross my heart.
The point I am trying to make through this personal experiential story is that how many times in our life we are afraid to take that important step just out of fear of failure. We are more conscious about the chances of failure and which we wish to avoid at all costs and due to this, we prefer to maintain status quo or play it absolutely safe – by simply not opting to take that risky step. When you don’t do anything risky which might result in failure, there is no question of you failing right? That is exactly the feeling we take refuge behind on countless crossroads in our life and we don’t take that all important step because we are afraid of failure – that negative consequence of your step giving you a wrong and unwanted result.
While playing this game of life safely, by avoiding all such dangers of failure by simply not venturing into that danger zone, we protect ourselves from failure, but in the bargain, we do not realize that we might have left so many opportunities pass us by because of our fear of failure. We do not realize that life could have been more beautiful, more pleasant, and happier maybe if we had taken those choices along the way. But because of our fear of failure, we chose to play it safe and not even consider those choices even once and let them pass us by.
So we cannot live our lives selectively like this. We cannot stop taking those important steps just because we are afraid that they may lead us to failure. Only if you jump in the water, you will get to know whether the water is cold or hot. Simply by sitting on the shoreline, you will never be able to fathom the temperature of the water or whether you will be able to swim or whether you will drown – it is only after you have taken the plunge that you will know the true outcome.
Life doesn’t give us too many chances and there are very limited do-overs in what life has to offer us in terms of opportunities. Once you shut the door on an opportunity, you might end up regretting it someday like me that I wish I had tried it out and taken a chance – who knows, today I may have been with her in a different kind of relationship. Well penny for my thoughts and as they say, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. So had I taken that step at that time without having contemplated 10 steps ahead of fear of losing a friend and what not, maybe things would have turned out differently for me in life.
We all need to overcome our fears and look beyond them for strength to take that step in that direction. Yes failure is an option, but it is not the only option. There is one more option called “SUCCESS” which beckons you from the other side & who knows, this success can be the turning point in your life and bring your life in a new direction.
So never let the fear of losing, keep you from playing the game. The outcome of losing and winning only hinge on the fact that you play the game in the first place.
Dr. Rajesh Mankani
