Why does someone’s failure invoke a sense of calm?
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I was casually strolling in my garden, checking my phone, when my neighbor uncle called me and asked “how is it going?”. I hate small talk but it seems like you cant avoid it. I greeted him, he asked me “how is work ?”. I replied “going good”. He then directly jumped to the nosy question, “Are you not preparing for MBA? You will not get a good salary without it. You will not get promotion”. I nodded.
Everyone around me is doing MBA. Or at least everyone is talking about doing one. It really creates a pressure that you are losing out on something important, especially if you want a non-technical career ahead. If you go on LinkedIn, you will find that all successful(general definition according to linkedIn crowd) people are MBAs, look at leadership team at any growing company, all MBAs. Adding to the FOMO are people leaving India to pursue all sorts of masters abroad.
It is not that I did not want to do it. It is that I tried it and it didn’t work out for me. That gave me real shock. I got all the anxieties, insecurities and felt like a failure. I tried it with all good heart and hard work but I still failed. That hit me really hard. Everyone I saw around me was climbing up the ladder, finding some or the other opportunity. Going abroad to study, enjoy, live a better life. And I felt that everything was falling apart for me. I tried to pick up myself, tell myself that better things will come to me, but that did not happen. Then I thought maybe I will not achieve success here. Maybe something else is written in the stars for me, but then at the same time it also felt like it was something human beings tell themselves to be hopeful about future.
A week later I got a call from my friend(he had joined an exceptionally high paying job a few months ago) and he told me that he was on the verge of losing his job. And that is when it happened. I felt bad for him but also somewhere felt calm. The news of him facing such a difficult situation made me feel better. Why? It gave me a sense that I was not alone in this, and that everyone is struggling. It gave me a sense of “its alright, grass always looks greener on the other side.”
You sometimes feel better when there is someone, who is associated to you, is also struggling in life when you are figuring out stuff yourself. It is not because someone else’s misery gives you joy. It is never the case. It just makes you feel a little bit calm that someone else also slowed down in this never ending race, someone else also faced an obstacle during his path and you are not all alone here. After that incident, I felt grateful for my job. Sometimes we all say about how people compare so much but in reality, it is always our own self who judges ourselves the most, compare ourselves with others, with utmost scrutiny. And we then feel that we are behind everyone else when they are just a bit ahead of us. And when they slow down, our pace feels alright when in actuality it is supposed to feel alright.
