When I was in school, the entire academic calendar revolved around exams.
Our vacation time; the curriculum taught; method of teaching; daily routine;
schedule of extra curriculars…
everything was worked around preparing us for the looming exams.
Back then, I was a diligent, disciplined hard worker (also back then, my mother was in charge of my life, so that explains a lot!)
But I digress…let’s get back to school.
I still remember the zing of nervousness that would rush through me
at the start of an exam.
That zap of excited anxiety when the question papers were being distributed;
the faint scent of blank, ruled answer sheets;
the stiff string that was handed out to tie the papers with;
pens filled to the brim with bright blue ink, all lined up and ready.
9am…felt like a fresh start! Like I was standing at the beginning of a race, waiting to hear the gun shot;
to begin writing and earning marks along the way, until I reached the finish line.
From 0 to 100…proving I had paid attention, writing all that I knew.
Yet, when the results would come, there seemed to always be room for improvement. Despite sheets and sheets of lengthy, hurried scribble, marks were always deducted from every answer, just because I missed a point or two.
And I always wondered why?!
Why would I lose an entire mark out of a two-mark answer, just for few missing words…while writing the remaining five lines merely earned me one?
It seemed highly unfair!
How could the presence of fifty words or more, be worth the same
as the absence of just three or four?
Decades later I see this familiar pattern still being repeated,
as my children appear for their exams.
Decades later…I’m old enough to understand that my perception was all wrong!
I now realise that exams are corrected following a pattern of DEDUCTION…
and not by the ADDITION of marks, as I falsely assumed.
You don’t start with a ‘blank’ slate and ‘gain’ marks.
Instead, you start with a ‘bank’ of a hundred marks and ‘lose’ some, everytime you forget something or when an answer goes wrong.
Once we understand this, it becomes easier to accept that maybe…
LIFE’s like that too.
Maybe we’ve been going about it all wrong!
What if…
at birth there’s a long list of privileges that we’ve already been blessed with, for a smooth and happy journey.
But everytime we do something wrong, or ‘forget’ to do something right…
something, big or small, gets taken away from us.
So instead of focusing on all that we have to achieve and accomplish…what if we tried NOT to relinquish what we’ve already been allotted?
Armed with this knowledge, would we approach life differently?
Would we stop thinking that we need to work hard, smart and sneakily even,
in order for us to check all the boxes of our ambitions?
Would we stop acting like bad sportsmen and entitled royalty, when things that we subconsciously remember as being promised to us from a long time ago, never get delivered?
Would we make a deliberate effort to live life
with carefully controlled actions based on a
good value system, courteous etiquette, love and humanity…
so as to not surrender all that we have already been gifted?
Would we live our lives
the way we were told to, when we were children….
like somebody is always watching?
Maybe…life is a balance of both sides of the coin.
Just as:
A good student isn’t just the one who remembers the most,
but also the one who forgets the least;
Being wealthy isn’t just about earning more,
but also about squandering less;
So also…
Life is not just about ACQUIRING the most,
but also about FORFEITING the least!
– Nitya Alwani Satyani
Yet another maybe…
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Sunset Effect - Nitya Satyani 