2024 was a rather funny year. I had set many goals and dreams but everything fell on the ground and broke into pieces. As great men said failure has much to teach, 2024 was indeed a brilliant teacher. This year forced me to introspect within myself and look for the flaws that badly needed to be worked upon. As I discuss all my life lessons in this article, I hope that the life lessons will help you get a better perspective on life and how its challenges should be dealt with.
As a 22-year-old girl, who is struggling to build her own identity, I initially used to put a lot of pressure upon myself. I wanted to be the master of all trades, excelling at twenty different things and having people around me applauding and admiring me. At the same time, such excellence will help me give a proper reply to all those people who have constantly looked down upon me, criticized me, and mocked me. I wanted to fly so high that nobody would ever be successful in pulling me down again. This took a huge toll on my mental health. I used to be sad and frustrated every time since my entire life depended on it. As a result, nothing fruitful came out of it. I sunk into depression.
Then I questioned myself, ’For whom am I actually doing all this?’ These are people who never had my best interest in their heart, who had always looked down upon me and prayed that I fell down every time. I am not working on myself. Instead, I am neither at peace with myself nor am I able to achieve anything to the fullest. This was when I realized I stopped giving such people that much importance and did what was best for me. These people are only there with me till college, and after that, once we have parted ways no one will have the energy left to put me down.
This brought me to the second lesson which was to take things slow and steady. I wanted to be some superhero, doing multiple tasks and excelling in them. I wanted to be that person who always won and brought laurels in whatever she did. I always used to compare myself with others and even curse myself for not getting faster results, for not excelling as well as others did. However, with time, I realized that I had my own journey. If I am so impatient to reach the destination, I will surely miss the growth opportunities and the learning the journey had to offer. Secondly, I have also realized that I am no superhero. I am just a normal girl who is trying to build her career, who will have to go through ninety-nine failures before succeeding the hundredth time. I was okay with embracing this new journey and the challenges this journey had to offer.
The entire 2024, I have always cribbed that life was extremely pathetic, nothing good happened and my grief is endless. What I didn’t realize was that I was responsible for almost all of my problems. Every day, I used to set daily tasks, hoping to complete them. However, I used to fail in most of these tasks. I procrastinated and wasted my entire day daydreaming. This resulted in continuous piling up of work which would add up to up and cause me to be depressed. If I took action and kept myself busy, such unnecessary thoughts would have never crept my mind. At the same time, the work would also be a lot ahead and I would have made so much progress. But, at that point, I was too naive to realise that. Overtime, I have realised that being busy is actually a blessing where you can avoid unnecessary overthinking and brings you a little closer to your goal every day.
When college reopened after COVID-19, I had to go through an extremely traumatic incident which shook my confidence to the core. After that, I was never the same again, never had it in me to face challenges out of my comfort zone. But, as great men say that to achieve something big in life, it is mandatory to step out of our comfort zone. I had accepted that big things weren’t in my fate to face the big, bad and cruel world. But then I realized that it isn’t wise to hold back myself just because something terrible has happened in the past. The pain isn’t our fault but healing is our responsibility. Our past might have been terrible but that cannot hamper my future nor can it stop me from doing something that is best for me.
Lastly, the most important thing I learnt was that life should not be taken too seriously. Things will work out when they have to, good things will come in the right time. Till then, we should put our best foot forward every day and enjoy life. Our blessings are abundant but we are so into our struggles that we fail to look at the blessings God has and is showering upon us every day. While we work hard and strive for a successful life, it’s always important to acknowledge that life has been kind to us and many don’t have even the smallest part of what we have.
In short, 2024 did not bring in a lot of success where I had failed in almost all my goals. But it also made me realise that there has to be a lot of growth from within to actually tick the entire bucket list. I am thankful to 2024 for all the lessons. All I hope that 2025 is not another year where unfulfilled resolutions of 2024,2023 and other previous years are no longer carried forward to 2026,that I actually can work upon both on my strengths and shortcomings and build a better future for myself and my family, and contribute to the society at large.
By: SOMDATTA GHOSH
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