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!