Never Lose Hope
You will reach where you are bound to
When I was little, I used to believe that we all grew up to become actors, and my dream was to grow up to be like my favourite actor of that time. Then slowly, as I grew up, I started to understand that this wasn’t the case. So, gradually my dream changed and then I started aiming to be a teacher. As kids we all have dreamt of growing up to be a teacher, haven’t we? Everything about being a teacher seemed so fascinating with the little understanding we had back then. I wanted to be a teacher so that even I could write on the black-broad while teaching, give homework to the students and check them the next day. I would also get to scold and punish the ones who hadn’t done the given task. I would be able to set the exam paper where I would know all the answers and only I would have the power to mark any answer right or wrong, using the red pen we used to see our teachers use. It surely seemed to be a fun job.
Growing older still, I next started dreaming to be a doctor like my father. It seemed to be such a perfect profession to be in; treating patients and getting them rid of their misery. It seemed like magic. I would admire the respect these patients would shower on my father and now started aiming at being like him when I grew up. However, once I started with my higher secondary, very soon I realised that it wasn’t the profession for me. This way my dreams kept changing as I grew up and ultimately, I landed being a Software Engineer by profession(but many things at heart 😉 ).
When we were young and we would watch these fairy tales, we would be so inspired by the perfect endings. What we failed to take note of is the struggle that goes in between and the hardship required to reach that perfect ending. All the fairy tales shows how difficult the main subject’s life is before he/she meets their perfect ending. We dream to be many things, but we are not ready to put in the effort that is required for it. Ultimately if we fail even once, we lose all our hopes and, it being in our human nature, we try to find someone to blame it on, and more often than not, we end up blaming God. We complain how unfair life has been to us and try to make ourselves believe that our bad luck is the cause of our failure and not our lack of dedication for the same.
We hear people say that life isn’t a fairy tale, but, I don’t quite agree with it. We can make our life similar to that of a fairy tale, if we are ready to put in the hard work that is required to meet our perfect ending. If we are dedicated enough to do that, everybody's life will be like a fairy tale.
As children, most of us must have heard and sung this song — I have a dream, a song to sing by the Swedish pop group ABBA. If we really get into its lyrics, we will observe what a positive message it actually holds within. It says in very simple words to try and find good in everything we see and never be disheartened even if we fail, because when we do believe in ourselves, success will surely follow, no matter how long it takes. If a person understands this truth of life, he has nothing to worry as he has cracked this puzzle we call life. This is why I have always loved and admired this song. When I was a kid, I simply loved it for it’s tune, but as I grew older and started to understand its actual meaning, it made me love the fact that how easily the lyricist of this song has included the most important secret of how one should lead his/her life.
In life, there are times when we feel that we are good for nothing. We must have really tried to succeed in various fields, but with no luck. Anyone in this situation is bound to lose hope. But, still we must try any hold on to that little ray of hope and try and understand that the reason for our failure is just because we haven’t yet been able to figure out where our actual potential lies. We need to believe that it is just not the right time, and things will fall in place when we are actually ready for it. Things just turn out to be better when we least expect it. Till then we need to keep our hopes alive and keep fighting our way through whatever obstacles are placed before us.
I feel having hope is the most important thing in life. After all, whatever we do is actually based on some sort of hope — We work hard in the hope of getting better appraisal, which again is based on the hope of making our present and future more secure; we exercise in the hope of either losing weight or to just be fit so that we may not fall prey to some illness; we try and eat healthy food in the hope of being healthy; we take medicines when we are ill in the hope of getting cured of our illness; and so the list goes on. Without any hope in life, we will just be like a non-living thing. Hope is what keeps us alive and going.
One quote that I truly believe in and which describes the actual meaning of ‘Hope’, goes as follows:
Hope is being able to see that there is a light despite all the darkness. — Desmond Tutu
