Looking What's Beyond Obvious

When I was still a high school student, I used to be a GC (grade conscious), competitive, and very much studious. Let me share with you an experience that almost dragged me down to the inner core. Take a ride with me as this time machine that I invented is finally launching.

Cleverness had always reigned in me. But, of course! I didn’t fear anything. I would take the risk just so the crown of excellence couldn’t vanish from me. It was like I always thought that contentment wouldn’t bring me anywhere, so I had to make simple things into worth envy. I had to prove to others that I could surpass them that I was one of the best, if not the best, among all. How would have I made this possible? Easy, by getting high grades and never to fail. (Obviously, this is just another school stuff!)

An exam was then scheduled, so I should be prepared. Luckily, I did find the topics easy as pie; therefore, it wouldn’t cost me a heavy study. The subject, for me, wasn’t difficult, and then I needed not to worry. The exam, true from my expectation was easy, though I studied on the eleventh hour, just before I took it. I went out of the classroom with a big smile, laughing. “Well, I’m going to get another perfect score,” I boasted to myself. I had been preparing to get that assumed score, like showing to my classmates that I would have topped the exam, surpassing them; but, when that time came, unfortunately, a bitter cry got me. I merely thought that the paper handed to me was not mine, that I submitted the wrong paper. I pointed the fault I committed to carelessness. Misty-eyed: the picture of me at that time. My classmates couldn’t believe I got a zero score, which only meant I didn’t get a correct answer, and they laughed secretly. I hurriedly headed back home, and it was raining cats and dogs. Nature expressed what was deep in me like it found a way to console me. A failure, I considered myself. I thought of quitting, maybe I wasn’t compatible with anything. “Quitters win, especially when there are left no reason to fight for,” I believed. I went to my mother and showed her my paper. I was expecting she would scold me that I failed, yet she paid me back with sympathy and a piece of advice. “Close your eyes, and think why that happened,” she said. I tried to seek out an answer as to why it should happen. It didn’t happen just because it had to but to tell me something. Something that blinded me that I truly feared, I declined to accept at the very beginning this fact: I was afraid to get a failing score; I feared to fail; I feared that people would think of me as dull, that I was no better than them. Yet, I came to be enlightened that being hopeless and belittling myself just because of a failing score wasn’t the solution. I faced the mirror, took deep a breath, and smiled because I knew something great was about to happen after it ̶ I would learn to know my limitations. Too much self-confidence is being boastful, and it’s bad!

Thinking how I overreacted during that time pays me a laugh now. Yes, I failed, but I learned something out of it. Anyways, life doesn’t count how many times one falls, eh? Life focuses on how stands up and overcomes falling, and that’s what’s obvious, what I see by my naked eyes because a treasure can also be hidden by mud.

Lead image from Google.

Thank you very much 👇👇👇👇👇👇👇