It is devastating
enough when it is unexpected. But even when you know it’s coming, in the most
pessimistic depths of your heart, when it comes, when the person who holds your
fortunes in his hand (whether he knows it or not) delivers the bad news –
brutally or kindly or subtly, it does not matter - you are jolted out of your very existence.
You may
say, for appearances’ sake, that ‘I tried and I failed; but at least I
tried.’ Or that ‘failure is a stepping stone to success.’ Or that some great scientist ‘had failed nine thousand
times before he discovered the light bulb’. You utter all that crap (and then
some) that you hear daily. None of it helps. The fact of the matter is that you’re
rejected. To add insult to injury, you hear that someone else was selected.
Why was she chosen whereas I was not?
Was I not ‘hard-working’, ‘a good learner’, ‘dedicated’, ‘promising’? Was I not good enough?
As Owen
Wilson says when Reese Witherspoon leaves him for someone else (and describes
Owen as a ‘great, funny, amazing guy’), “all the hot words.”
But.
But.
Rejection
is rejection, however eloquently it is delivered.
The blow
doesn’t land right away, though. The numbness stays for a while. By then you start believing
that you are immune to it, that you have taken it so well despite it being so
inhuman and unfair. Then it hits, like thunder gradually following lightning. Much of the beating is taken by your self-confidence.
Once it happens, it is hard to shake it off. It just stays with you forever. Even when some day, you have found your own little successes.
No comments:
Post a Comment