A tale of two timelines

[dropcaps type=’square’ font_size=’80’ color=’#4a4a4a’ background_color=’#ffffff’ border_color=”]A[/dropcaps] t any given point in time, multiple versions of the same person exist. The person they used to be, the person they could have been if they hadn’t broken their leg in seventh grade, the person they are, the person they know they’ll be when they go off to college, and many, many more.

I’ve had these versions of myself too – the person I used to be before my first falling out with a friend, the person I could have been if I hadn’t lost the people I did, the person I am, but perhaps, most notably, the person I thought I’d be when I moved to Australia.

I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of living away from home – I enjoy learning new things about people I’ve never met and exploring places I’ve never been before.  When I first joined SP Jain, I was more excited about the prospect of being able to go to Sydney than I was about starting college itself.

I was in love with a version of myself I had concocted – a confident, independent, financially stable college student who spent her weekends at the Sydney Opera House, and her weekdays balancing work and academics.

And I was crazy about her. In my eyes, there was nothing that this version of myself could not do – anytime I was faced with a difficult situation, I found solace in knowing that a few years down the line, once I was in Sydney, these things would not affect me anymore.

I would be free.

Or so I thought.

[blockquote text=”You see, the problem with having so many versions of ourselves within us, is the dichotomy between how real they are, yet how fragile and fleeting their very existence is. They’re so real, so authentic to us – but at the same time, their reality is shackled by conditions that are often out of our control.” text_color=”” width=”” line_height=”undefined” background_color=”” border_color=”” show_quote_icon=”yes” quote_icon_color=”#4285F4″]

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always found solace in assuring myself that I would be able to achieve something if only certain things went my way. When I was seven, I had to take a compulsory art class at school, and I quickly realized I wasn’t very good at it. I didn’t like that, because I had always prided myself in being the best at everything that had to do with school.

I noticed that a boy in my class drew beautifully. His sketches were so clean, so detailed, that to seven-year-old me, he put Picasso to shame. He had the most beautiful set of Faber Castell pencils, and I was convinced that they were the secret behind his talent. For weeks, I pestered my mother to buy me the same set of pencils, secure in my belief that having them would make me better at art. Needless to say – that did not happen. I still sucked at art, the only difference was that I enjoyed the class a lot more; after all, I got to stare at my beautiful Faber Castell pencils.

That was perhaps the first time I experienced that conditional success was not success – i.e., attaching a positive outcome to external circumstances was not a good strategy for personal development. Since then, I have found myself in a similar position more often than I’d like to admit – ‘I can click better pictures once I’ve learnt photography officially!’ or ‘I would have aced the test if I hadn’t fought with her and gotten distracted’; and the list goes on and on.

However, the turning point in my life, the one incident that really drove home the flaw in this logic was: My obsession with going to Australia. I had joined SP Jain to benefit from the Australian exposure I would get from studying in Sydney for a couple of years. In this process, I had convinced myself that everything that came before my time in Australia was not as significant. That the traits I craved to develop – financial and emotional independence, confidence, clarity, and the ability to stand up for myself, could only be achieved once I was living in Sydney.

I refused to accept that just going abroad would not magically transform my personality – Had Bollywood lied to me? Not likely. That’s what happens to everyone, and that’s what would happen to me. I had no plan in place to develop these qualities.

A consequence of attaching so much weight to my external circumstances was that I had forgotten to account for how far I’d come despite being confined to my room for the past year and a half. I’d taken up more initiatives than in person learning would have allowed, and I had started to play squash.

I was just too busy mourning the version of myself I had lost to notice. And it really wasn’t easy to snap out of that. After all, losing these ‘what-if’s and ‘could-haves’ is devastating. It makes you wonder if you can ever trust yourself again. It shakes you to your core, and questions life as you know it – because depending on these external factors is all that that version of you has ever known.

I know now that the only version of me that matters is who I am now. The rest of it is either in the past, or not likely to happen unless I put in the work. There’s no secret to success, and there’s nothing truly magical about external circumstances – some just make it easier for you to put your best foot forward; much like living alone would have done for me.

Now that I can go and place myself in that situation, I realize that all’s not lost. Instead, I may have just gained something very beautiful – the chance to reconcile the two timelines that, both, broke me, and made me who I am today.