Fathoming Failures

If failures in life were to be the yardstick to assess our human worth, then there would be no human person left on earth; perhaps the animals and plants would be much better off in that case. We know that everyone encounters failures at some stage or other, and I would be bold enough to say that not a single human person is there, who has never encountered failures in life. We could say that failures are our second nature, and it is only because of our failures that we can bow down our heads before God, nature and circumstances and acknowledge our limitations. Every time I fail to accomplish something, I feel bad, and sometimes the failures put me off, and I regret for not doing my best for the work assigned, and when people cannot face failures, they go to the extent of ending their lives. Every time results in schools are announced, there would be at least a couple of cases of suicides of students.

When my friend told me that she had not got through one of the two examinations she had appeared for, I was not disturbed. From her voice I could make out that she was disturbed by the results, and she even said that it would take her a couple of days to get over the feeling. Serious people would often find it hard to accept failure, especially if they had given their best for a work and at the end to face failure is unthinkable. Such people think that failure indicates that all their labour has gone in vain, and it was a futile job that they had spent so much of their time and energy. But we do know that there are areas where success does not depend on our ability or intelligence alone; there are other factors which are responsible for getting through in life. Therefore we need to look at failures at the proper perspective.

How much of responsibility could we take up for the failures that we encounter in life? There is no magical formula with which we could measure the rate of our responsibility; it all depends on how much of the work depended ourselves per se. For instance, to get through the examination, mere intelligence is not enough; we would hope that one is able to write well in the examinations; feeling sick on the day of exam may be enough to produce bad results. Then we would hope that the answer script lands an examiner who is in his proper disposition to look at the paper objectively. If he or she had a fight at home in the morning, then the reaction of that anger might be reflected on the answer scripts. Then we would hope that the addition of the marks is done accurately and that there is no addition mistake, and lastly that the persons reproducing the marks on the final list do the good job and don’t change the figures. All these are responsible for our success.

Even if there had been a loophole in the entire process, then our success could be jeopardized. Therefore it is proper to take failures with a pinch of salt. There are external pressures which control our success; psycho-social and cultural context also contribute their own mite towards our success. My purpose is not so much to justify the failure that my friend had to face, but to look at success and failure with as much objectivity as possible. I had known that she was not in a proper frame of mind when she went to write the examination, and had even told me how she felt while writing the exam, and therefore I could not blame for failing in one exam. Blaming her for the failure could only cripple her self-confidence and usher in more failure.

How are we to look at failures in life? Failures in life cannot be taken as the failure of the person; we need to dissociate failures from the persons. Failures, we are told, are stepping stones to grow and forge ahead, and they could also become the proper motivation to excel and go beyond the expected standards. They could serve as the spark of flame which could explore the volcanoes of creativity and originality. If a school dropout could build an empire of software companies (I am referring to Bill Gates of Microsoft), and another school dropout who finished his schooling at the age of 13, could give the world the consciousness on the present moment (I am talking about Eckhart Tolle, who had revolutionized the world with his ‘The Power of Now’), we all of us can make something worthwhile out of our failures. The only precondition in the process is that we do not turn back, but fix our eyes on the goals set ahead and march forward.

Penny wise, Pound foolish

This senior man was known as an austere man, who would spend hours on end in order to save a few pennies, and would glory in it. He would walk for more than an hour, and would not take public transport, because he had to pay for the travel, and ultimately come back home exhausted. He has a very strict sense of poverty (as a religious man who has vowed poverty, this is very much fitting), and would swear by it. If one were to look at his shoes, it would be worse than that of a beggar, and he has only one pair of dress, which he would wash at night and wear it during the day. Well, that is his style of practising poverty, and no one can really argue with him about it.

It is true, he is fully convinced of what he does, and if it is his personal conviction, no one has the right to question him about it. But what I am concerned about is, not about his personal conviction, but about how his personal conviction comes in conflict with the interests of others living with him. I have realized that it is not easy to live with people who have strong personal convictions; it is rightly said that it is hell to live with saints! But the saving grace is that this gentleman would not demand the same standard from others, leave alone impose it on others. At the same time, he would not like to be questioned about his standards.

He had been coming to our office for three days to complete his annual ritual – entering the marks of a subject he was teaching in the college. This is the moral education, and it is doubtful if any of the students took his classes seriously, but he takes the examinations and marks so seriously that he would spend more time tabulating than in correcting them. He would tabulate them in MS Excel and then would check it, double check the marks, so that there is no error, and then would go one by one marking all those who had failed in Red. Then he would need to take a print out of this for the file. I had been asking him if it is all worth the trouble, and he would want it that way, and no one can argue with him about it.

It was said that this gentleman had one of the finest brains in the campus, but after his completion of the doctorate in physics, he began to teach in the college, but it was found that what he taught went over the heads of students and so he had to be stopped. In the meantime he took up certain topics as his areas of interest, which in the long run, became his obsession, and he would fight with people tooth and nail in order to show that everyone who did not subscribe to his views were wrong and that only he could give answer to some of the moral and religious problems which haunted the human society.

I have no regrets about the man, because there is a fair amount of genuineness in him; he is excessively obsessed with poverty, and it would be a futile effort to argue with him about the notion that poverty does not tantamount to privation and even beggary. We need certain essential things in order to live a decent and dignified life; if one thinks that these things are redundant, and would not like to avail them, then the person is sure to place himself on a separate ground, morally condemning everyone for not following his own standards and precepts. I would not dare to call his way of doing things as ‘penny wise and pound foolish’, but it would be very close to it. If only he could put to good use his wisdom, then he would be richer than the richest. But it may take him another birth to look at the other side of the spectrum.

Dressed to Dazzle!

You look gorgeous! You look splendid! You are the most beautiful lady on earth! These are the common conversation-starters during dinners, parties, social gatherings! We, of course, know what people appreciate: not so much the people, but the clothes they have worn, the necklaces, bangles, ear-rings, or rings! What better way to win the attention of a lady than to flatter her on her clothes, choice of colors, ornaments, and men know very well how to make women float in the clouds! But that is not the whole truth: there are some who know how to present themselves as wholly as possible, without mixing the natural and the artificial! It is not an easy task; it might take several years before we understand the right proportion!

Dressing in general and for an occasion is an art, which very few people master; very seldom lessons are given on proper dressing, except if one is being initiated into the fashion world! But we often come across persons who would look beautiful with whatever they wear; at the sametime we also know people who would look clownish and misfit whatever they wear! We often hear people making comments that we have no taste for colors! I am proud to have a few of my friends who are aces in dressing themselves, and in dressing up others, so much so that they are often in much demand to dress up for special occasions.

The clothes we wear, and the ornaments we adorn ourselves with often have two functions : either to enhance the inner beauty of the person who is wearing it, or to kill the inner beauty and project the artificiality of the clothes and ornaments! The fashion industry is meant to research on the first function and help us realize the ways of enhancing our inner beauty, but reality is far from it. In any fashion parade (which is often dubbed passion parade), the natural grammers are reversed; instead of going along with nature, attempts are made to make a stark distinction between what is natural and the unnatural, which often goes in the name of creativity.

I have realized that the people who dress up best are the people from the villages, who have no sophisticated formula of dressing themselves. There are no special make-ups, and yet when we look at them, we know they are beautiful! The simple clothes and natural beauty present them as far more beautiful than the city-bred artificially decked beauty queens. Clothes and fabrics industry has become one of the most profitable and important business today; fashion designers are much in demand for anyone who is part of the who-is-who of the film industry and political arena.

Any well dressed person is a joy to the eyes of the people who would have a glance at them; the personality of the person is heightened immediately. No wonder people take extra care about their dressing before going for job interviews and examinations. But they may just forget that dress alone does not matter; how you dress is more important than what you wear. I for one, is a poor dresser, who does not pay sufficient attention to what I wear and how I do! I may have to take lessons from my friend, who would only be too delighted to offer me tips on how to dress (she often does, though I am quite used to not listening to her tips)! Maybe next time, I will listen to her tips and see if they make a difference!