The water was gleaming with the reflection of the
deliciously round moon and the bright lights parked at the edges of the
swimming pool. I dipped my toe in the
water gently, feeling its lukewarm temperature. I was debating whether or not
to dive in. I wasn’t much of a swimmer that time, so I stood there, in a
dilemma. My friend had sprained her hip a couple of days ago, attempting to
dive in a wrong posture. Eventually, I climbed down the steel ladder and made a
lame dip at the pool. There were little kids shrieking at the top of their
voices and jumping in the pool merrily. A moment later, I questioned myself,
“Why did I not take the plunge?”
There are so many moments in life, when you feel like doing
something, but never do it, fearing rejection or failure. Before beginning to
write this, I asked few people a common question, “Are you a risk taker or do
you play safe in life?” Very surprisingly, every one gave the same lame answer
“Depends on the circumstance!” I do not blame them for not being able to give a
lucid answer, because the truth is that most of the time, we unknowingly play
safe.
When you see a man raising his voice against someone smoking
in a public place or, a guy proposing to a girl by singing loudly in a park or,
an Indian girl bringing her boyfriend home to introduce him to her parents or,
a Saas bluntly shouting at her Bahu “Oh Savitri! Itna kharch karegi tho dheere
dheere mere bête ko barbaad hi kar degi”, then… knock knock, you my friend, are
watching a Bollywood movie. Conventionally, such stuff doesn’t happen in the
real world. Most of us lack guts to take the plunge.
Why so? Because, the first question that pops in the mind is
“What will they think?” This “they” play major roles in our life. We weigh
every decision of ours based on how we think “they” might interpret it. My
chachi thinks mushroom is non-vegetarian, so I won’t eat it or my nana thinks
that all doctors do is cutting stomachs, so I don’t wanna be one. I am just
giving silly examples but we actually take many solemn decisions of our lives
looking through someone else’s glasses, using someone else’s perspective.
I don’t mean to say we must act like complete daredevils and
take irrational decisions. All we must do is think about the consequences of
our decisions on a bigger scale. “What is the worst that can happen?” and “What
is the best that can happen?” are two questions that must run parallel in our
minds.
Life is too short and valuable to be spent in regression.
Our dreams transmute rapidly, failure voraciously waits like a devil on the
doorstep, success plays “hard to get” and opportunity knocks only once. So go
ahead, stretch yourself up and take the plunge.
“Life’s a climb, but
the view is good” - Miley Cyrus
