I was in India along with my kids. My husband was here in the US, alone. Not that it would have mattered if in normalcy. Yet it was important to make that trip to India as was is important for him to stay back employed. It was important enough for the trip to be funded by family in India. There were lot of loose ends and unresolved issues that had to be put to rest, and things don’t move or work out the way we are used to in the US.
With one employment in the family, we were going through a major financial and emotional letdown, even as we were trying to deal with the repercussions of the recession and a loss of stability. And even that single employment was in jeopardy of being snatched away, and it was snatched away due to the company’s decision to shut down. Of course, my husband kept it to himself as we were in India, but the shock of coming back home to a volatile situation was chilling and frightening to the bone. Various responsibilities and the innumerable things hanging in balance were like an axe ready to drop on our necks.
From then to now, has been an indescribable journey! Here we are, one year to the week, coinciding with my husband’s birthday (July 4, 2013), us together, employed and children graduated with flying colors going into middle and high school. I should definitely say that some blood stayed strong for us and so did a handful of friends, unconditional, rock solid and non-judgmental, with a guardian angel tagging along. The vowing for life group of friends and some stubborn unforgiving blood has long disappeared into the shadows of the night.
Failures and successes are measured on so many different levels, at various crossroads in life, with opinions, expectations and judgments taking precedence over hard work, courage and support. I can map out our entire life plan, but it all comes down to when the actual actions start. Things always don’t go according to the plan and any fight plan we had in place depends on our reflexes to fend off the things that had not meant to happen.
Each of us, at some point in life cheat or got cheated. That does not mean we are cheaters or dishonest people. Shit happens to the best of people and we need to clean our act from time to time. As long as we take responsibility and accept what we have done, moving past the hurdle is relatively much easy. The difference between who we are and who we wanted to be entirely depends on what we do.
Failure is not the end of the world. In my opinion people overrate it and forget that every action in our life is a step towards giving us an identity, make us responsible, harbor crisis, tone our thoughts and ignite confidence. Everyone should get to that stage in life where it is important to stop doing things, adjust your sails on a different course against the wind, and start looking at self as a success, because success is just a state of the mind.
It is not easy to get into the arena and get yourself scared. It takes guts and courage to give actions to ideas in order to achieve a dream. Idle people are nothing but cowards throwing stones to hide their jealousies and inadequacies. It was not my job to please all or defend my actions, because if people really knew us, then they would have understood and as for others, explanations were not believable.
It is important to remember that we can have everything in life, as long as we realize that we cannot have everything in life!