Lesson I learnt from a 2-year-old

These little shits are geniuses, btw.

Gavin D'Souza
3 min readJul 14, 2017

I live in an apartment. Rizelle is my 2-year-old neighbour. She maybe cute and all but she’s every bit of savagery. Storms into my house, orders my folks to get her food, toys and chocolates. That mesmerizing witch! Wish she’d teach me a skill or two.

What you call, “Throwing Autocracy.”

Rizelle asks me to play ball with her one afternoon. Unable to resist legit hypnotic rays beaming from those orby eyes, I had to oblige. After two failed attempts to catch the ball thrown at her, she moved on to play with cars.

Rizelle did not think what I would perceive about her abrupt switch in interest. She had no fucks to spare about how she appears to me for being fickle-minded.

She thought she wanted to do something else and she did it without the unnecessary baggage of guilt and shame.

Tomorrow she’d go to school and make friends. But she would still dig the mud for bugs and worms. She won’t associate ideas like, “would Tyler find me cute if I dig for worms?” “Would the society accept me?” “Is my future secured if I continue looking for grubs?” “What if my family disapproves of what I do?”

No.

Rizelle would do what she feels like doing and no punk ass authority can stop her.

People wonder what their life’s purpose is. What is it they have to do to get that BMW. That desk with the CEO embossment. That public recognition and respect.

Here’s the thing: you already know it.

You are an existing entity with internet by your side. You talk to people. You search stuff online. You do something the whole day and yes, that also counts shamelessly scrolling through Facebook. It is that something that makes you talk. Makes you click on the video to hear what a certain person is saying.

That is your passion and it is scrolled under your thumb, just like that.

But Gavin, how am I to make money by watching Superhero movies?

How am I to know about that? Heck I don’t know what colour socks I wear or if I even wear any.

The point is, you will not get all that you ask for. Solutions to your dilemmas don’t magically materialize before you. You can’t be the next Stan Lee or Rowling. That doesn’t mean you have to sit and wail about it.
Just get going and do shit. Do shit for its there to be done. No need to fret about how you appear to people or how it’ll turn out for you in the future.
Opportunities are all around the place. Reach out and grab one. Don’t like it, toss it around, go for the next. Until one day you hold onto something you really wish to struggle for. Something that you are ready to bear the pain for. Something that wills you to sacrifice a virgin, if need be.

You do not compulsorily need to be passionate about something to do it. Do it because you feel the need to do it.

When George Mallory was asked why he wanted to climb the Everest, Mallory simply replied, “Because it’s there.”

You aren’t alive, if you don’t stop and breathe once a while.

While Rizelle now explores Tarzanian ambitions, trying to swing by curtains; being the wonderful menace that she is.

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Gavin D'Souza

The causalities of life from yet another banal, ass-scratching, mindless, potty-mouthed wannabe, who might just blow your mind sometimes. Sometimes.