Stumbling unto greater heights.
“Fall down seven times, stand up eight.” It’s a Japanese proverb that has a compelling value that’s valid to any phase in life yet it has always been a phrase that I deemed to be pretentious and outright incredulous. Even with this phrase being an ideal that is universally accepted I never thought that this would apply to me. Funnily enough, life has its wicked ways of brutally enforcing the bitter taste of reality upon you, as it did with me.
I spent the majority of my life set on achieving one goal: to get into medical school. Although academically, I performed slightly above average; ironically, not a lot of people believed in me. However, that didn’t actually function as any form of a hindrance to the effort, time and grit I put into being able to achieve this goal. Ultimately though the results did not favor my efforts and for the first time I understood the true epitome of failure. Feelings of despair, aggravation, and shame ate away at me and I struggled to get back on my feet. Keep in mind this was only the first official fall I had faced.
Eventually, that one fall accelerated to a couple more falls along the way to the point where I could start to feel myself slowly beginning to give up and undeniably admit defeat. To make matters worse, growing up I learned to depend solely on myself which lead to my biggest downfall at these dire situations; I was unable to ask for help.
This inability contributed to me becoming incredibly distasteful and bitter. My well-known fire of always putting my best foot forward started to dim and my grades overall started slipping, my presence at athletic games were diminished and I spent most of my time confined within my room.
My friends were able to detect the subtle differences in my very prominent personality. Fortunately, they reached out and provided a support system to help me get back on my feet. A system that taught me to be more expressive, to be more accepting of the situation and look for alternatives that can best serve as a motivational drive.
There always has to be a plan B, because that’s just the nature of life and sometimes you just don’t get your way. However I want to stress, that this doesn’t mean that you put any less of an effort in your original ideal plan and that you give up on dreaming big. It just means that when you stumble you need to find a supportive system to depend on and learn to keep standing back up. It’s completely okay to depend on others and it’s completely okay to keep falling. Ultimately it’s a process, a long unpredictable yet a pleasant process.
So just breathe…We’ll get there.
