Or you just might run into yourself. And take it from someone who does it quite often, the head bump can be quite painful. How many times have I told myself to forget whatever absolutely embarrassing abominable thing that I did, pick up the pieces and move on? But the image just sticks to you like…. like the overlapping fold of the envelope which you have to rip off in order to see how much money your grandparents left you on your tenth birthday. I mean I have a hazy recollection of what my eighth standard teacher said while congratulating me on topping the entire class but I distinctly as hell remember my second standard teacher slapping me on the back of my head just as I was about to launch into the second stanza of “Hathi mere Saathi…” during the third period on a Monday in front of my entire class as I was demonstrating my newly honed skills on the table drumming front. And every time that thought runs through the 65k colors fully functional mental LCD projector that I carry around in my cerebellum, I can swear to god I could just melt and disappear through the crack in between immaculately laid out matching tiles which are a part of a mural on an ostentatiously rich man’s shining bathroom wall.
Why is it that we can file our achievements so easily but our failures haunt us to the ends of the world and back? Why cant I just accept the fact that the first time I ran the 100 m for my physical examination grade in class six, half the girls of the class beat me and had it not been for the burst of speed (yeah baby!) I put up in the concluding 9 m of the race; I believe it would have been a lot worse? I mean I have always been this anti establishment guy in terms of sports who believes the sole purpose he was ever let near a sporting arena was to cheer and jeer in that order respectively. Why then does the thought of my Physical training teacher saying 35 sec at the end line bother me even after so many years? I thought I was a much bigger man than that. Guess I was wrong.
I think the reason why I can’t let go of my failures is that they constantly remind me of all that I could have done differently and been a more successful person today. I keep replaying that entire sequence about multiplying 9*3 in the Maths oral exam in class 1 and answering 18 and hope against hope that maybe just maybe today in the drawers of my mind that kid standing in front of the teacher would answer 27 and get a perfect score on the paper. The sound of the mishit snare in the final roll of the all important solo of Stairway to Heaven still resonates in my head with the intensity of a speaker system with tweeter woofer, sub woofer at full bass even though nobody in the entire audience even noticed it. I guess what makes this a particularly nagging thought is that it ruined what would otherwise have been a near perfect copy of Bonham and boy would I have been proud. The very reason that I missed perfection by the hundredth of a millimeter makes the fault stand out so glaringly. The fact that I keep turning around and stubbing my toe against myself is because all these moments make me painfully aware of the fact that I am what my mistakes make me.
Ever heard of that saying which goes “you are only as strong as your weakest link”? I believe that is the entire origin of these repeated visits to the darkest moments of my life. I don’t want to remember them but these memories are here to stay. They are never going to leave me and so it is that my only chance of survival lies in befriending the devil. I can’t wish the images of me tripping over myself away but what I can definitely do is take lessons from them so then I don’t add to the archives. But come to think of it do I really need to go through so much pain of learning from mistakes just so that I can have mental peace and no haunting memories for the rest of my life? I have to exert my mental faculties with retrospective effect so that I don’t have to exert my mental faculties with retrospection in the future? Am I running around myself in riddles without understanding what I am typing here? Come to think of it, I have had quite a good time at laughing over myself remembering these mishaps. Have had quite a few successful dinner conversations with that 100m “dash” of mine. So I guess as long as I can laugh over my misfortunes and stick the middle finger at all the doofus impressions that I have put up for the world to see, I really don’t mind….. turning around.
Why is it that we can file our achievements so easily but our failures haunt us to the ends of the world and back? Why cant I just accept the fact that the first time I ran the 100 m for my physical examination grade in class six, half the girls of the class beat me and had it not been for the burst of speed (yeah baby!) I put up in the concluding 9 m of the race; I believe it would have been a lot worse? I mean I have always been this anti establishment guy in terms of sports who believes the sole purpose he was ever let near a sporting arena was to cheer and jeer in that order respectively. Why then does the thought of my Physical training teacher saying 35 sec at the end line bother me even after so many years? I thought I was a much bigger man than that. Guess I was wrong.
I think the reason why I can’t let go of my failures is that they constantly remind me of all that I could have done differently and been a more successful person today. I keep replaying that entire sequence about multiplying 9*3 in the Maths oral exam in class 1 and answering 18 and hope against hope that maybe just maybe today in the drawers of my mind that kid standing in front of the teacher would answer 27 and get a perfect score on the paper. The sound of the mishit snare in the final roll of the all important solo of Stairway to Heaven still resonates in my head with the intensity of a speaker system with tweeter woofer, sub woofer at full bass even though nobody in the entire audience even noticed it. I guess what makes this a particularly nagging thought is that it ruined what would otherwise have been a near perfect copy of Bonham and boy would I have been proud. The very reason that I missed perfection by the hundredth of a millimeter makes the fault stand out so glaringly. The fact that I keep turning around and stubbing my toe against myself is because all these moments make me painfully aware of the fact that I am what my mistakes make me.
Ever heard of that saying which goes “you are only as strong as your weakest link”? I believe that is the entire origin of these repeated visits to the darkest moments of my life. I don’t want to remember them but these memories are here to stay. They are never going to leave me and so it is that my only chance of survival lies in befriending the devil. I can’t wish the images of me tripping over myself away but what I can definitely do is take lessons from them so then I don’t add to the archives. But come to think of it do I really need to go through so much pain of learning from mistakes just so that I can have mental peace and no haunting memories for the rest of my life? I have to exert my mental faculties with retrospective effect so that I don’t have to exert my mental faculties with retrospection in the future? Am I running around myself in riddles without understanding what I am typing here? Come to think of it, I have had quite a good time at laughing over myself remembering these mishaps. Have had quite a few successful dinner conversations with that 100m “dash” of mine. So I guess as long as I can laugh over my misfortunes and stick the middle finger at all the doofus impressions that I have put up for the world to see, I really don’t mind….. turning around.
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