You hail from what you have been through.

Life has never been reasonable at any given time. While success is all we yearn for, we are confused about what to assume since we all along equate our triumphant moment to be a rosy garden with a red carpet laid on the ground for us to head to our goals. A smooth transition is what we desire. But does life work in that manner? 

A charming smile is what we feel obliged to wear while a crowd of paparazzi is busy clinging to their cameras with a lot of questions being posed to us on how we managed to get to the finishing line, being awarded a trophy on the stand of a podium, an arena filled with a multitude of people chanting our names. That is what we feel the reality of our dreams should be but is it? Life is contrary to what we envisage, a total contrast of the harsh reality facing us as an obstacle to our success. 

Sometimes we get to a point in life where we are incapable of grasping the situation, bursting with insurmountable pressure coming from all directions. It takes concrete groundwork in our well-being to survive the thunderous blows which are channeled in our way, yet we still need to be steady and resilient with an undying effort of diligence and a tangible stand of not giving up on what we hold dear to us. 

A relentless struggle of overcoming hurdles after hurdles, a continuous act of dwindling. But we still wake up, dust off, and move on as though nothing solemn ever happened. We sometimes get to a point where we get overwhelmed and feel the need to just throw in the towel. Fed up with continuous criticism and a life of misery, we feel we can no longer handle it, but once we give up, what’s next? If we don’t strive to prove the naysayers wrong, what purpose would we have served on this earth? 

The aftermath, as usual, is depression and maybe suicide. So, the only question left with us is either to halt or rise and advance with our mission, what you pick is all up to you. Let us heed some lessons from a mentor of patience and assiduousness. Thomas A. Edison attempted virtually 10,000 ways on how to invent the electric bulb. To him, all that was not a failing process, but a learning progression. 

We need to work on how we can acquire a positive attitude and having the free will of an optimistic mindset so that we can triumph. It doesn’t matter what we face. Sometimes it might be difficult to accept what stares right into our eyes or even to let go of what we treasure. Have you ever heard the statement “when it rains, it pours”? 

Sometimes one might encounter challenges ending up with a loss, it could be betrayal or being burdened with financial issues such as bankruptcy and indebtedness. It might be difficult seeing your empire collapsing or letting go of who is dear to you in divorce or the act of accepting the fact that someone you’re love passed away. It is difficult, hard-hitting to say the least, we can cry for a while, sympathies for a season, but then what next? 

I know in such circumstances, confusion overwhelms us, not knowing the next course of action. Since all the awful moments come at once, we might not want to remember or even think of it. The world seems to have left you all alone, dazed with situations that you can’t even comprehend. When nothing seems to make sense and hopelessness threaten to engulf the little life out of us, that’s when we say it’s either do or die, and life must go on. 

So, don’t allow situations to put you down; you are more than a conqueror, a unique miracle to the world, a champion who won the race of 100 million sperms, aren’t you worth anything? What I would recommend you do is search within you for the seeds of greatness that sow in you, so that you can rise and shine the sparkle in this world with your exclusive aptitude. 

We tend not to realize that our true strength lies in how we overcame our struggles, how we rise from the ashes, from the shaming path which we commenced with to where we stand today. We believe those atrocious incidents of our former self once exposed will deprive us of our decency, yet in the real sense, they expose the heroes and heroines within us. 

We are all destined to be someone at some point, and it doesn’t matter when the dream will come to pass. In existence, there are more than just mere dreams. We need to stop dreaming and start walking the steps of the dream for ourselves. We all go through bitter moments, but do we stop there, or do we grow and heed the lessons taught by nature. 

One might look at a duck on a pond that seems so serene, but what we do not see is the struggle going on under the surface of the water. We all paddle in our ponds. The only moment we stop paddling is the moment we stop living, which could be scary for most of us. But our journey is meant to have one lane, just to forge forward and there is no turning back. It is the ultimate desire of every living individual to enjoy life, be happy and it is through the same that we attain our dreams…. 

By Dr. Mohamed Bahaidar (Sociologist, Recipient of the most distinguished award in the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia, Author of The Hidden Self, The Point of Deflection, A Household of Bliss, Sparkling Hope, and Mirror Reflection).