Why do we fall Bruce ?

In the first part of the popular trilogy, ‘The Batman begins’, Thomas Wayne asks his son when his son falls in a dry well,

“Why do we fall Bruce ?

So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.”

This is and will remain one of my favorite monologue out of the many, from the popular trilogy. Upon contemplating, why is it so hard for us to pick ourselves up. I realized the following 3 factors which earlier I missed out on , pull us back from picking ourselves up.

1. C for Courage.

Indian kids mostly have been taught and trained to play it safe since childhood. Being in a risky situation is seen dreadful. What is failure then ?

It is a precarious situation in which one is vulnerable. A kid who has always struggled to succeed and has never found comfort with failure treats failure as a defamation. We have always been very shameful about our failures. Indians are known to laud success stories and to hide or go anonymous with their failure stories.

Most of us feel vulnerable when we talk about our failures. While it is natural to be vulnerable, the idea is to embrace the vulnerability. We all know that success can’t come without failures, we just happen to lack the idiosyncrasy of embracing failure , an idiosyncrasy which pulls us back from getting up.We need to be audacious and courageous enough to embrace failures and accept the fact that it is alright to fail in life.

If given a choice and an authority, in order to make life simpler for future generations , I would change what C stands for in kindergarten. For me,

Alphabet C stands for Courage.

Teaching the same, right from inception will make us less fearful and help us embrace failures with courage which will aid us in picking ourselves up better.

2. Patience is the virtue.

I started reading this book called ‘What the internet is doing to our brains’ by Nicholas Carr. One of the major cons that are mentioned in the epilogue itself is that Internet is responsible for making us all impatient.

Right from school to college to work, a click on Google and bam we get our answers. Things have become effortless and super quick for us. There was a generation who used to read and research for hours from old books to get their answers. For us , its a matter of clicks here and there. Not that I am doubting the boons of internet that it has.

What I am insinuating is that internet is a major reason that our entire generation is heading towards quick success, quick results and correspondingly ready to input quick efforts only. Sadly the offline i.e. the real world doesn’t operate like that. To pick our-self up, one has to showcase perseverance consistently.

3. We are in this together.

I have met people who are struggling, yet their major problems are a) What would others think about them ? b) Why is the other person more successful than him/her ? c) What are others’ key mantras of success ?

I too have operated in somewhat similar fashion before. The above way in which people operate is just plain wrong. Never ever head into a battle to out-beat someone. That’s just short-term erroneous strategy. In the end we all are in this together, fighting with our demons and our own foes.

I strongly believe in the sense of togetherness. It is a peaceful thought. It helps me focus on my goals. I believe that we all are struggling and that we are in this together.

The day you focus on your battles without the intention of thrashing someone, you will be able to better fight your battle with utmost focus. After all it is not a sprint, picking ourselves up requires us to run a marathon.

The central idea is to focus on right things while picking yourself up.