A Blog by Aayushi Tailor
What truly will be considered a perfect life for someone? Will it be having enough money to buy expensive things to fulfil their wants, will it be having a beautiful wife and having kids with her or will it be being well known and famous in the world.? If I get a chance to describe the definition of perfect life, then I would say that a perfect life is where you have moments of imperfection and you still have that perfect attitude to deal with it. A perspective, where even if you have less materialistic things in your life and only few people in your life, you still find a perfect kind of satisfaction with all of it. One should know that perfection is to find satisfaction in quality and not in quantity. Perfection is not in the future, where we imagine ourselves achieving everything we ever wished for, but it is about embracing the present situation with its imperfection but still finding it perfect. To support this, I would like to state my own experience.
It was the starting of my second semester as an architecture student. The first semester had been difficult for me where I was among those few students whose model project got rejected the most. I managed to put in all my hard work in my first semester and got satisfactory grades eventually. Finally, those hardworking sleepless nights had paid off and I was happy.
During the four-hour journey from my hometown to the city where my college is located, I told myself that I will work harder for my second semester. I was quite excited for my second semester and to meet all my friends. The second semester started on a good note. My first idea of model making was approved and I was asked to start working on it. I told myself that this will be my year and I will be making tremendous progress. The days passed and little by little my model was progressing, but something within me was not. I thought that working hard towards my goal always made me feel content, but here I was, with no interest to go back and work on my model. I thought it was just me being lazy, but with every passing day I literally had to push myself to even start working. Despite having worked for only 15 – 20 mins on my model, I felt exhausted with no sense of interest, but then I still pushed myself to work for at least an hour and a half more. Still, at the end of those 2 hours, there was no sense of enjoyment that I felt unlike before where I used to feel proud and satisfied when I worked hard towards my goal. This dissatisfaction started reflecting on my work and all my models got rejected. Despite having scored well in other projects, things still didn’t matter much.
Four months passed with the same state of mind, with no interest and enthusiasm, with me convincing myself that it is just a difficult part of my life. Slowly all this started affecting all my work. I thought that It will all be fine If I gave it some time, but It did not. Instead it kept getting worse and it became difficult for me to even get out of my bed.
It was on one such day where I had to attend a class, but I was not motivated to get up from the bed despite One of my friends calling me and asking me to attend the class. I was lying on the bed, crying, and telling myself that I cannot do this anymore. Then I stood up, packed my bag, and left for home. By the time I reached home it was already night, my parents were shocked and even angry with my impulsive decision. I started crying in front of them and my mom immediately held me.
A month passed with lots of convincing from my family’s side as well as from my friend’s side to continue with my degree, but I still did not have any motivation. I also sought help from a counsellor, crying in front him and expressing how deeply I have disappointed my parents. I remember him telling me, “It is not the end of your life, it’s just about deciding a direction and it completely depends on you, which direction you would want to lead now.” I think that helped me a lot.
Within the coming month, I set on a journey on knowing myself better and also exploring various other fields that might interest me. Soon I found myself reading on a subject called psychology, the various theories by the famous psychologists intrigued me. I kept on digging more and learning more. But there was always a question that kept running in my mind, “why did I quit architecture when it meant everything to me?” It disturbed me a lot.
Finally, I decided to pursue psychology as my major. It was not a difficult choice to make but I was nervous because my life had taken a new direction and I was uncertain about the upcoming challenges. The fear within me asked, “Will you drop psychology the same way you dropped architecture”? I didn’t know the answer then, but I was about to find it soon.
It has been more than two years of studying psychology now and I absolutely love the subject. It intrigues me every single day and I always wish to go back to studying it after a break of having fun with family or friends. My passion towards it has reflected on my grades and I always end up being one of the top five students in my class. Now when I sit back thinking, I know my answer to the question of quitting architecture, it is because architecture was just my interest and psychology is my passion. Also, I think quitting is not the right word, because I didn’t quit on myself, I didn’t quit on my goals. It was just the direction in my life that had changed, and I learnt to let go of things that didn’t make me satisfied. I learnt that you are satisfied when your hard work satisfies you.
In our lives we all have our own imperfect moments of failure, disappointment, rejection, and it is these imperfect moments that gives us all an equal opportunity to learn the perfect lesson of our lives. At the end it all depends on us, on how we learn this lesson, Perfectly or Imperfectly.
– A Blog by Aayushi Tailor