Beaten but not defeated

Resilience is the capacity to bounce back despite setbacks and failures, disappointments and grief - a quality to be cultivated by one and all. Stretch a fresh rubber band to its utmost limit, and then leave it loose. It will regain its original size. A man should condition himself similarly. Life is not a speed boat zoom ride, but a bumpy one on a canoe bouncing up and down along with the waves.

Many get cowed down by difficulties and hardships which are but temporary spills on the bigger canvas of one’s life and the vast canvas that is the universe. Let us exercise control over the tractable factors in life and display calmness in the face of the uncontrollable. A person may dislike his job as it entails waking up before sunrise.

He can easily quit it, bearing this hardship as a temporary setback, and look for another job. Why lose sleep, literally, over this? A student is forced to take up a course that he finds difficult, just to please his parents. Is there no option? It seemed so for the twenty five odd students who, in desperation, took their own lives during this year in Kota, where the training centers are out to make learning machines out of hapless IITJEE/NEET aspirants. The students instead should have been hardy to face the well known impostions of long hours of study. If not, they should have simply quit the training and convinced their parents, who may have been angry and disappointed for awhile but would have valued the well being of their wards more than the loss of money and a cherished dream.

There are avenues galore for their wards to follow without snuffing out the very life with which to pursue them. Resilience teaches one to take setbacks in one’s stride and keep steadily marching forward. It teaches one to bear and restrain oneself amidst daily anger faced within family. It teaches one to accept illness without despair as my daughter Rukma had done. It teaches one to accept the death of a daughter as a reality of life like I have done. A person who has failed or suffered emerges stronger for the experience just as a clay pot gains structural strength after being burnt in the kiln.