Partha Prawal Goswami

We are the prisoners of our own conscience. Most of the time we fear the unseen and the unknown; mainly because we do not have an idea of it- either positive or negative.

Our mind works faster than a racing bullet and in most cases it wants to possess things which are desired by us to a great extent. For example, I am associated with the journalism world and I want to rise to the extreme top. For this I look up to the successful breed of journalists who have reached there with extreme hard labour and loads of sacrifices. I too want to be like them and my desire draws me towards it inch by inch, but I am a prisoner of my own mind. I fear to fail and fall (may be); but the desire keeps working speedily within my mind. The charm and the glamour of the desire is so strong that I just see the success, and overlook the tedious effort behind.

This is not only my case, but there are another 100s and 1000s aspiring professionals who are going through such a ‘mind arrest.’

Few days back I met an old school friend, whom I was meeting probably after a gap of 10 years. Lot of things have changed in this one decade. An aspirant musician during those days, Girindra now was working as a SBI manager. With a decent enough salary, he is due to get married in two months time with his childhood sweetheart Mitali- who is  a doctor.

“Partha, tell me a thing bondhu, could I have been a successful musician had I pursued on with my dreams? I still string the guitar at times,” he asked me finishing his second bottle of beer.

“I think, you would have been a good guitarist, if not a prolific vocalist. But… Well, why don’t you start it all over again then,” I asked him in return.

Smiling sheepishly, he brought his face close to me and whispered, “I fear to fail. Even then I feared to fail and even now I fear to fail.”

Girindra was true, we all fear! Fear to fail and fear to try again and fail a second, third time. Our mind, right from our childhood, is trained in such a way that it sees and understands nothing but only ‘success!’

Girindra is now a successful banker, and he very well could turn a musician too, only if he let go off his fear and release his mind of the arrest. We all can be what we want to be; even I can be a successful and sought after journalist, but…?

Seeing a fellow journalist post an article on some topic, or photographs with a ‘page 3’ personality, pushes my mind into the dark alley of self doubt and uncertainty. The thing that the mind overlooks is that there are 100s more out there, who are going through the same feeling of ‘self doubt’ and in this case I am the one who they look up to and envy (probably, just a wild guess!).

The world is a small cone, with almost same stories and topics for the journalists to explore. The art of presentation is what matters the most and this is developed over the years of tedious practice. But, the mind is too pre-occupied with the glamour of success that, ‘the most’ vital part is overlooked and ‘almost’ skipped.

“Bondhu, success is something like 100 years old Scotch and it is absolutely wrong to expect the same taste from a 10-year old bottle. But, who wants to wait so long or who wants to seek after it so long,” opined my friend Girindra on success and desire.

And to add on to it, the arrest of our mind to certain uncertain uncertainties doesn’t help either. Shh, what a pity!