How I Am Learning to Make Peace With Missed Opportunities
How do you deal with the gut-wrenching pain of not being able to reach towards the things you prayed and worked hard for?
Something (or someone) that is right there, within your reach and yet, you can’t have it. You can’t enjoy it. You can’t make it your own.
The entire world is focused on advising you to ‘work hard. Keep your focus on your goals. One day, all of those sleepless nights will be worth it. You will forget the pain once you reach there.’
They made us ‘destination focused.’ They told us ‘there’ is a place that will define the worth of our lives. They made us fantasize the place, an outcome, a lifestyle which will be flagbearer of our happiness.
But what if you don’t reach to this definite place? What if you have to watch yourself sit back, and let the opportunities slip away from your hands? What if you want to and yet you can’t?
The ever genius podcasters, and books like GRIT teach us that to reach your goals, you need ‘WILLPOWER.’ That the only reason you don’t have what you want is because you are lazy or you don’t want it enough or that your willpower isn’t as strong.
Well, when I first started my career, when was about 19, I read such books. And somehow, it sat in my mind that ‘I have to work as hard as possible so I can reach there. Because I control my destiny. So if I am old and I don’t have anything significantly big to show as the reward of my intelligence and hard work then, I must have done something wrong.’
You see, what I didn't realize at the time was — it doesn’t matter how much you want something, how hard you work for it, and how much you power through, if it isn’t for you, you won’t get it.
This is the harsh truth about life which the world won’t let you admit.
Why?
Because if you realize working hard is not the key to success or whatever it is you want, you will not run like a rat in a hope of cheese.
You will slow down. You won’t buy books and courses on how to be successful or unlock your higher self or watch videos on how to become your best version.
You will, instead, sit. Yes, you will learn to sit a lot. You will realize, your work is just work. It doesn’t define anything about you or your life.
You will become a peaceful, and more or less a satisfied person. And God forbid, such a person is of no use to economy.
So, we are trained to believe that WILL is all you need to have what you want. And if you don’t have what you want, IT’S ON YOU.
Reality?
It’s not true.
I have seen people who have worked harder than the devil but they are living hand to mouth. Their day-to-day life is a struggle.
For example: Recently a girl messaged me on Instagram and asked for advice. She said, I want to be an airhostess but my parent’s won’t allow me. What should I do?
I told her, she should insist harder. She should make her parents sit down and explain how much she wants to be an airhostess. That it’s the dream of her life.
To which she said, ‘Renuka, I come from a very conservative family. I am a Muslim. In our culture, women don’t dream of becoming an airhostess.’
I didn’t know what to tell her after that.
What do you think I should have told her?
Perhaps, I should have send her books like GRIT, or 7 Habits of Highly Affective People, or The Secret.
Do you think those books would have helped her?
I don’t think so.
Why?
Because sometimes, you can want something with all your heart and yet your situation will keep you stuck.
The Missed Opportunities:
I had a dream.
Ever since I became an author, I wanted to be invited for speeches in colleges and corporate events.
I remember being jealous of one of my online friends who is an author too. She used to do such college speaking events. Looking at her pictures, I used to feel a pinch of jealousy.
But the jealousy faded away with time and I lost myself in my work. I thought ‘If it’s meant to be, it’ll be.’
Three years later, when I have received speaking invites from 10 colleges in the past three months (three from the biggest colleges of India), I can’t go.
I can’t go because I have injured my left leg so badly that I can’t even walk let alone travel to different cities and speak in front of hudrends of students.
Every email invite hurts.
It reminds me how much I wanted this. How much I prayed for this. And now when I am being invited, I can’t go.
Not only it’s something I wanted (and still do), it’s extremely good for my career as an author. It’s through offline events like these that I will be able to build my audience, meet real people and connect with them.
I feel like I am pulled back.
When people are moving ahead, I have to sit here and watch not only my day-to-day life but also some great opportunities slip away from my hands.
So what do I do?
If in two years, I find myself standing far away from ‘the place’ I want to reach, whose fault will it be?
Mine?
Because if I wanted it enough, I should have found a way to go anyway. Maybe, I lack WILL-power, right?
The truth, however, is I can’t even put it in words how much I want this. Yet, I can’t reach for it. It’s there in my palms. But I can’t hold it. In fact, I am the one who has to drop it, let go of it.
That is the test of my courage and faith.
When you can’t have what you prayed and worked hard for, when you have to let go of what is within your reach, what you know you can do, what you always thought was your dream, that is when you are being asked to show courage.
It takes strength to let go of your dreams. To not ‘grab’ the opportunities but rather watch them linger over your head as a reminder of who you could have been.
Those are your silent battles. Only you know what you had to let go of.
No one else sees those internal struggles. No one can see why you still cry for what you had to let go of. You don’t lose a dream, a person, an opportunities only once. You lose it everytime you remember of it. You lose it everytime when you watch someone else enjoying the same things you wanted. You lose it in your mind time to time.
And it takes strength to believe that you couldn’t have worked hard. It isn’t your fault. To come back to the same conclusion again and again that, ‘It wasn’t meant to be.’
Maybe, you sacrificed a dream of your own to take care of your family. Maybe, you had to let go of your dream because you didn’t have the means. Maybe, you were born in a family where survival was priority over anything else. Maybe, you had to go of your partner because it wasn’t working anymore.
Letting go doesn’t mean you are a failure. Letting go doesn’t you lack willpower. Letting go doesn’t mean you didn’t try enough.
Letting go, of anything or anyone, is a sign of strength and acceptance.
To have the courage to not cry for what could have been but accept ‘it is what it is.’
To have the courage to believe ‘even if this didn’t work, maybe something else will.’
That is strength. That is faith. That is the test of your character. That makes you strong enough so you can learn to rely on yourself. To learn to find something else to hold onto, something else to work on, something else to give a try.
What certain motivational speaker or even spiritual gurus don’t realize is that, FATE is a real thing. You can want what you want but you may still not have it. And as much as we are told to work hard, and power through, we should be taught how to find peace in letting go as well. To have the courage in the midst of a breakdown that, ‘Maybe, I can start again with something else.’
In no way, I am asking you to not fight for your dreams or to simply give up as soon as things get tough.
But I am telling you that, there comes a time in your life when you have to watch a dream crumble down, whether it was a dream of starting your business or a family. In these moments, you don’t need to power through or blame yourself. Rather, sit back and accept ‘Okay, I can’t do this. But maybe, there must be something else that I can.’
Allow yourself to explore another answer. Know that, if something didn’t work one way, maybe you can try another approach or maybe you can find another dream altogether.
It’ll be tough to start again. To accept you can’t have what you want for situations that are so out of your control. But having the courage to go on anyway is curiosity.
Curiosity will lead you to another dream, or path. Curiosity will make you try 10 different things that you never even though about and then, one of those little curious desire will begin to excite you. The more you will chase that excitement, the closer you will get to ‘this another direction’ that wanted to be worked by you.
Conclusion:
So, maybe instead of holding onto the idea of ‘what you could have had,’ you can question, ‘Okay, what now?’
Start little. Stretch that little until it becomes a dream you feel excited towards. Let your curiosity guide you. Because, I promise you, ‘If this didn’t work, whatever ‘this’ was, something else wants to work specifically by YOU.’
Find that something is your purpose at the moment. Sometimes your job isn’t to achieve but to explore. Instead of labeling yourself as a failure for not being achieve your dreams, label yourself as an ‘explorer’ who is on a hunt for another answer, another dream, another path that is for you. That might work. That might just change the course of your life, not in big ways but how it begins to excite you on day-to-day basis.
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