MY REALIZATION...

                I'm not the smartest man I know, not even close. The smartest people I know are three very good friends I have. This piece of writing has nothing to do with them, but before drifting away from their mention, I should point out that they're not achievers by any means and I call them smart purely on the basis that they have massive potential and do more with such less effort; a gift of higher capability.

                Now this is where I get confused. Am I person of substance? Does anyone out there think about me and say, "Now he's gonna make it big someday in ‘so and so’ field"? Is there something I am good at that I don't know about? The problem is that I love trying new things. There is no dedication towards any one thing as such. Today I feel like singing, tomorrow I’ll try my hand at writing, the day after I might try getting up early to run and work out to build a body. A few iterations of these interests lead to me becoming knowledgeable in many things, but just never good enough to do anything about it.

                I remember the summer after 5th grade, there was a swimming pool in the neighbourhood. I didn’t know swimming then, I just used to jump in and play around. Most days I would play for 8 hours at a stretch; Holding my breath underwater, jumping, doing flips, acting like an animal of the sea. The water became a place of comfort. Years later this turned into a sport I performed best at. I wasn't a winner by a long shot. Nope! Winners went to the gym and regularly worked out and practiced for many hours a day, became stronger, then swam and won medals! I was just this kid who never broke a sweat but could really impress you with his way around a pool. I guess my boredom lead me to becoming good at something.

                Rewinding a few weeks back to the spring of 1999, my spring vacation for 5th grade had started. In quite the bored state I’d wandered into a book store. One particular book cover appealed to me and I picked up the book. I bought it, read it, and fell in love with the concept of reading. I went back again. And again. And again. In two months I’d finished reading eighty books and had them stacked all over my room. Initially one of these small novels took me three days of continuous reading to finish. As time passed by, I’d increased my speed to three hours a book. I was slowly moving to bigger books and smaller print. The next academic year I was one of the outstanding students in my English class. I could never understand why it was all so easy for me.

                Today, even with a serious lack of proper reading, I continue to find English an easy subject to tackle and thoroughly enjoy it. I still find it easy to navigate through a pool without feeling any different than I did all those years back.

It just never ceases to surprise me that if something is given sincere attention, it truly pays off. Be good to something and it becomes good to you. I sit and wonder now, that if I was so sincere in doing everything else in life, where would I be by now? And it's not just the activities that should be sincerely done. The one you love, friends, family and people generally around you should all be treated with the sincerity you would expect to receive.

                Now, I don't really regret not doing so many things properly in my life. Not at all! I love my life the way it is, and I have all that I need! But being only 23, I realise my life has in many ways just begun. I can apply all these realizations I’ve arrived at, into my life, even now and do an impressively massive amount of things! Of course, this is not just applicable to my life, it's applicable to anyone who is willing to really try and truly be sincere!

BELIEF...

     It’s not common for people to change their opinion about matters close to heart. Whether it is to say that their first love was in fact a person of immensely bad character, or to agree that their favourite band isn’t all that original in their compositions. We have our beliefs that form the person we are. Even in times of utter bleakness when our lives don’t seem to have a desired future or suddenly our past seems to have been a complete waste of time and resources, we have these ideas that we have nurtured into existence that reside in the very depth of our conscience. These ideas define our thoughts, our actions, our behaviour, our expectations, and our every move. It is in good sense to know that this is the very institution of sanity: Belief. As long as there is belief in something, there is a need to move forward; there is a need to do something in life; there is a reason to have confidence in yourself. Initially these ideas, these beliefs, are fragile. They tend to be affected by the slightest manipulation from the outside world. But as more time is dedicated to those thoughts, they become stronger. They transcend the boundaries set by an ordinary individual and virally affect the masses in the surrounding. A person is strong and safe when they possess such beliefs. But what happens when the belief is taken away? In the simplest case, what happens to someone when the person they have put their every belief in, just walks away? Do they move on? Do they hold on to that same belief regardless?

     The human race has not only survived but flourished over time. This is keeping in mind that almost every individual has had someone leave them and violate their belief in them. It is not implied that people somehow suddenly ‘move on’. No, in fact in  most cases there is a temporary loss of sanity, a sense of deranged thinking, very little care for the world (and in quite a few cases- for one’s life). Of course all this doesn’t really add up to anything except extreme depression. This is but a temporary phase. Interestingly, our belief was never taken away, broken, shattered or subjected to anything even closely related to destruction. It quite simply evolved.

     Evolution is an amazing concept, and I’m not even talking about the biological evolution. Evolution is adaptation to the changing surroundings. As children we didn’t have a direct need to be responsible in a general sense. We just had our own little world to live in. As time passed, each and every individual slowly evolved into an awkward teen (still forming ideas) and eventually evolved into an adult. No more could anyone afford to live in their own little world. They lived with others and for others. They adapted, their ideas changed, their belief in life changed. Money was suddenly more important, a bright future was required, and more than sex: love was a priority. It wasn’t just natural adaptation that helped them evolve. There was a far more powerful aid: Time.

     It’s a simple concept really: When your belief in something seems to have disappeared, give it time. It isn’t wise to make big decisions with a fragile mind-set that follows a loss of belief. In time, your belief gathers itself and becomes stronger than before. It tells you what to do next in the most logical and matter-of-fact manner. It isn’t a case that your belief has become completely bulletproof. There is always going to be a little pain and a little hesitation, but that is the price to pay for being human.

     If there is a belief that helps, it is that: Everything works out in the end and for the better! Furthermore, this isn’t a belief that you should expect to change, it should be kept as a pendant of hope and give you strength in times of despair. At the end of it all, believing in yourself is all you need to do.