As my six-year-old prepares to step up to the school microphone for their very first recitation competition, our whole household has turned into a rehearsal stage. She recites a line, pauses, starts again, and recites it better. Sometimes she asks me to listen, while at other times she assumes that I am listening while she is performing it to her stuffed animal toys. And I, being the mother, can simply marvel at the earnestness of childhood.
One evening while she was practising, I said, “You are doing very well, but don’t be disappointed if you don’t get selected.” I said this to keep her grounded in reality; after all, rejection is also a part of life.
She looked at me, genuinely bewildered. “But Maa,” she said, “I am trying so hard.” Then after a moment’s thought, she added the final verdict, “If I don’t get selected, I will cry my eyeballs out.” I laughed, hugged her, and told her to continue rehearsing.
But somewhere, her words lingered on my mind long after she had wandered off. Being an expert overthinker, felt unsettled.
Beneath every examination result, rejected manuscript, unsuccessful interview, business venture that quietly shut down, sits the same bewildered statement. “But I tried so hard.”
The older I get, the more I realize that effort and outcome have never shared the straightforward relationship we wish they did. Though effort matters immensely, it is always accompanied by other variables like timing, circumstances, opportunity, and also the very environment in which we find ourselves, including the people standing beside us. More often, these mysterious variables remain stubbornly beyond our influence no matter how meticulously we prepare.
We definitely know this as adults; yet when it comes to our children, we are often tempted to present the world as a fair and orderly place where hard work is inevitably rewarded. To be honest, don’t we all desperately want it to be true! Most importantly, watching your child encounter disappointment feels like watching them lose a piece of their innocence.
The next moment I found myself spiralling about the students whose stories appear in newspapers every year. Bright young people who do not clear an entrance examination and eventually conclude that life itself has rejected them. As a mother, I cannot read those stories or watch those bereaved parents without feeling a lump in my throat or a knot in my stomach.
Though examinations are important, no examination is qualified enough to judge a person’s worth. No rank or result should carry the weight of a human life or even have the authority to tell a child whether tomorrow is worth waking for. Unfortunately, along the way, many young hearts begin to believe exactly that.
We as a society have contributed to this notion with a lot of nuances. We enthusiastically celebrate success stories, selected candidates, the topper, the winners and the medallists and rightly so. But we are so inept in the language of disappointment that although we know how to congratulate, we fail miserably to console. We are conditioned to frame certificates but are never guided to honour effort when the outcome is unfavourable. Sometimes, this makes me wonder; is this why failure feels so lonely?
The truth, however, is that most meaningful lives are built as much from fiascos as from glory. By middle age, most of us carry a private museum of things that did not work out. Unfinished courses, rejected job applications, the relationship where we grieved the living or decisions that messed up life so badly that it feels like an inception of failures; just layers of setbacks that even Christopher Nolan couldn’t untangle.
At the time, it felt devastatingly significant. But the good news is we are here- living, laughing, paying bills, forgetting stuff to add to the grocery lists and yet coming up with a previously non-existent version of the same recipe without its key ingredient. Age has taught me that resilience is a far more useful quality than perpetual success.
As I sat there conducting this entirely unnecessary overthinking exercise, my daughter continued practising her poem blissfully unaware that she had triggered an existential reflection on achievement, failure, parenting and modern society.
I looked at her and said, “If you don’t get selected, you will still be my baby, and I will still hug you as you cry.” She looked at me unconvinced. I continued, “If that happens, we will go out for ice cream and celebrate.”
“Celebrate what?” she asked.
“Not getting selected.”
The confusion on her face was magnificent, but it soon faded into a wide smile as she happily hugged me back.
Win or lose, celebrations are a choice, and I want to choose it every day. Some days life says yes, and on others life screams no at you. Neither answer is important enough to stop loving your life. Perhaps that is the exact lesson I want her to learn and remember: that if ever life says no, I hope she learns to sigh, say, “That’s unfortunate,” and order dessert anyway.
By Bahnika Sen
Bahnika Sen is a trader, fitness expert, and writer. She can be contacted at: bahnika23@gmail.com
