Areesha Iqbal

Life, A series of Success and Failure!

Once, while discussing one of my failures of life, a teacher of mine had said to me,” Areesha, if one is not having challenges in their lives, that doesn’t mean that they are successful, that means that they are doing nothing with their lives. And from that day till now, I have taken this as one of the best lessons given to me so far. So I thought why not share this with all you all too.

We, as humans, always want a perfect and carefree life. We wish for all our desires to come true and for a smooth and healthy life. We not only desire it but we work for it too. During our journey of achieving our goals we encounter numerous problems and challenges but just as we get a single issue we start complaining, we freak out, we ask and we say ’God does not loves me’, ‘why always me?’, ‘why not someone else?’’ my life is a mess’ and many more whining sentences like that. But little do we know how important and useful for us these challenging times can be. These are the times that decide what we are, a warrior or a loser. By losing I am not referring to failing some exam, an unsuccessful marriage, or a fallen business. Real losing is not being able to fight back, not being able to bounce back, and not being able to start over. I remember when Confucius said,” our greatest is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall”.

So in these challenging times, we take our final decision of being a loser or being a fighter. Not only this but these hard days are actually your good days, for only during these days you get to learn something new in your life. Every challenge comes up with a package filled with life lessons and experiences. Those which can never be found on Wikipedia and those which were never printed in any books. If there are no challenges there is no learning and when there’s no learning, there’s no growing!

Do you know what our life is like? It is like a TV show series in which it is predefined that in every two coming episodes, one would be a happy one and the other would be a sad one. If you want to know the whole plot you are required to watch all the episodes including the sad ones. But if you decide to watch a happy episode and skip the sad one you would never be able to understand the essence of your character in life series and you would never know what your story actually is.

If you are not fond of watching TV shows let’s take another example.

Our life is like water. If it is in flow like a river, it will remain fresh, beautiful, and lively. Good and bad times are like the ups and downs of the waves of our river. If the up is there but the down is not, the waves can never be formed and so the river would never flow. The water would be stagnant like a pond and sooner or later, it is going to turn to a marsh with no beauty and life. That’s the law of nature. No one there exists with life so perfect. But if you still find someone with a perfect life that’s probably because they are still and stagnant, stuck in the marsh. They have no learning and no new experiences. such people turn old very soon. Physically they may look young and beautiful but mentally they are wrinkled and worn out. They may seem to grow taller and younger but their mental growth has stopped until the day they start to take and accept challenges.

Dear mates, never be afraid of challenges in your life, never complain about them. Instead, start cherishing them because these are the signs that you are actually doing something with your life instead of being on the same spot on which you were some years ago. Keep taking the plunge, keep progressing, keep learning, and growing. This means nothing but that you are alive, physically, and mentally too. Also, you are the hero of your life show so you have to be in every episode to make it a blockbuster series!