Not taking a risk in life, is the biggest risk.
We often find ourselves pulling away or running towards something familiar, when we have to put ourselves out there. Risking everything we have is the biggest gamble and the worst possible outcome is rejection. But is it really as devastating as we make it out to be?
It’s all about how you play your cards…
1. Where art thou, Romeo?
You know how you feel when you’re 16? You feel like every little thing is the end of the world, you embarrass soon, you hurt more often and you hesitate a lot. You know why this happens? Because we as people, care about other people’s opinions, for some of us fortunate ones, that changes with time, but for the rest, the feeling dilutes but doesn’t really go away.
I always thought I belonged to the former category, until recently I discovered otherwise. Since the time I was 10, I knew I wanted to be pursue acting, it seems silly, but that was my dream.
I was called a lot of things, sissy, pretty boy, unrealistic, but I didn’t show them how much it affected me.
I had set my eyes on playing Romeo in our school play in my final year, I knew this was my year. My year to prove to everyone of them, who I really was. Thankfully, through this ordeal I had Ryan with me, he was my best friend and an aspiring actor too! I practiced more than I studied for my boards. I breathed, ate and slept thinking about the play. I was so ready when the auditions came along, that I didn’t bother checking the audition sign up sheet, because if I had, I would have seen what I hadn’t been seeing for so long. I went up on stage and breathed it all in, just a ritual I perform everyday, I performed my whole routine and ended with a flourish.
Instead of applause, I got whispers, I got stared at and I was questioned about how I had managed to copy every move that Ryan had performed, something he’d passed off as his original choreography.
I didn’t know how to react, I ran off stage and didn’t stop until I reached home.
That month I was teased, snickered at and made to feel like a talentless sissy.
Ryan never spoke to me again, he got a scholarship to a good college in the US, while I stayed put, performing all over the city, sometimes small gigs, sometimes huge productions. Until a musical of Romeo and Juliet rolled upon me, I sat in the audience waiting my turn and there was Ryan performing the same thing I’d trustingly performed in front of him in school.
Today, I’m standing backstage, proud of myself for never letting that rejection define my life, because as they call Romeo on stage, I smile and run to take a bow and the only face I can see is Ryan’s, sitting in the front row, rejected and hurt. And you know what? Now I know what they mean, when they say, revenge is a dish best served cold.
2. Into oblivion
On most days I feel empty, but today standing on top of this familiar mountain, I feel loved, not by a person, but as if the universe is finally smiling down on me. This spot is really special to me, nothing can make it unholy, it’s my sanctuary.
I was 5 when I first discovered it. This virgin, green pathway full of wild plants, curling away from the cliff, as if they’re scared to get too close, the canopy of leaves above, the only shelter I’ve known during the time my Dad left us to fend for ourselves. The rugged blanket that looks so out of place that it’s almost comforting, served as my abode after school, to get away from all the whispers, the questions and judgemental sympathy.
Only she was allowed here, the girl who smiled at me and didn’t talk about my dad or my torn backpack.
She spoke about Archie, Jughead, Veronica and Betty. When I told her I always felt like a Reggie, she laughed and said I was too much Archie to be anything else. She sat right next to me on the blanket in the woods, slurped on lemonade, until we had to go home.
She made me feel like I could do anything. She even made me go to college, pursue a degree, she was right next to me when I started my own publishing house. She never called herself my girlfriend, but I didn’t need her to, I knew she was my world. One day I bought her a ring and got into the car, before I could say ‘To the woods’, I got a call, my building was on fire. I left everything and hurried but I was too late. My insurance was non existent and my life’s earning were burning up in front of me.
It would all have been salvageable with her telling me it was going to be okay.
I looked around for her and saw a figure in red backing away from the carnage of my dreams. I ran behind her, I did that for 2 months, until I got a card in my post that was her wedding invitation.
She rejected me as a husband, as a lover, as a friend and even as a presence in her life. So today, with nothing to lose, I look around and smile. I know everything will be better on the other end of this. I take out the first Archie’s comic she ever gave me and hug it close to my chest and take my final step off the cliff, into oblivion.
3. Rising like a Phoenix
It was the year 2006, when I was yearning to sit in this exact conference room, however I thought I’d be on the other end of the table, clad in an Armani suit, handing over contracts. It’s been a whole 10 years since the last time I was here.
I came in shuffling papers, straightening my tie, rehearsing my ‘Why do you want to work here’ speech. I can’t help but break into a smile. ‘Mr Gupta, is there a problem?’, apparently these suits are very nervously studying my face at this moment, I just nod ‘No, nothing at all’, as I continuing signing page 104.
When I graduated from college, I had my eyes set on Greaper.com, they were the biggest internet giants, a parent company with so many interesting apps and websites, that I knew this would be home to a developer like me. Sadly, they didn’t think so.
I was devastated, I went back home dejected and confused.
I tore down the posters, the bulk documents that consisted of proposals of my ideas, the ’10 year plan’, I had so proudly pinned. I went through similar symptoms people go through when they break up.
First I got really angry, I felt like my life was over, I cried, I blamed them, then I blamed myself, until I composed myself. I can’t say what I did next was inspirational, because to me it was second nature, I took my laptop and worked on my next 10 year plan.
I thought, I wrote, I created and I dreamt.
What I didn’t dream was that, my app would become a world wide sensation, I’d become an overnight billionare and that after 10 years, I’d be called into Greaper.com to recieve a funding so unbelieveable that it made my heart sing.
As I walk through their revolving doors, on my way to reveal the good news to my 210 employees, I know that the universe works in mysterious ways and more often than not, it’s for the best.
Don’t let rejection get the best of you, because the best is yet to come.