Leaping high

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