Don’t Throw Any of Yourself Away.

There is a rabbit hole that I dive into often.

The rabbit hole of regrets about unfinished projects in my life.

And I cry over them. Lament about it to my circle. And hate me for all those unfinished projects.

The regret train usually catches on one of these questions:

Why did I waste all that time, money and energy doing projects that never amounted to anything finally?

Why did I not stick to one pursuit and be the master of it?

Why did I leave many projects halfway without seeing them through the journey of excellence?

The questions are the same.

The topics range from piano learning to French classes to upskilling medical courses!

Make no mistake. I am a believer in following our curiosities and being a lifelong learner no matter what.

But there is no escape from this frequent regret train that hits me.

Where does this fear of unfinished projects come from?

There is a familiar constant narrative of success we learned since childhood.

We get recognized for being the best in anything growing up and nobody cares for the effort. Mastery is applauded and revered while imperfect attempts are considered mediocre.

And even after surviving all the academic years, we see that things haven’t changed in the real world.

Whether it’s work or social media, we celebrate the wins only, just maybe with different measurement tools.

For example, if it was about more points when we grew up, it is about getting more eyeballs in the present social media world.

So in a world that rewards only the results, it is hard to keep the mindset of a beginner and be happily engaged in different pursuits together. Because at times, you will see that you suck at what you do, which is not at all Instagram-worthy.

The other day, I was thinking about the things that keep me alive and excited.

The list went like this,

• writing letters to people,
• trying new things like art classes,
• reorganizing home space,
• making deep conversations with people in my life,
• and so on.

Nothing in the list made sense to the word ‘success’.

Everything is ordinary and mediocre.

But guess what, the major part of life is about these mediocre moments.

Yet, the mainstream narrative and our deep-seated beliefs about ‘success’ often take the upper hand and we are thrown to self-degradation for our unfinished pursuits and multiple ‘mediocre’ interests.

We are ashamed to be seen as ‘mediocre’ and ‘vulnerable’ and ‘not at par’.

What happens then to our different pursuits?

The same that happened to my Piano interest. Premature death.

We leave our bits and pieces as we move forward.

We abandon our interests and projects in search of the ‘big things’ in life.

We imagine that we will get back to it one day and surprise the world when we are ‘ready’ to be seen.

Surely, that doesn’t happen, because we are never confident enough to be a beginner.

I mean, if you think about it, most of us are only a part of what we really are. Isn’t that unfortunate to say the least?

That we are not able to claim ourselves fully in our one beautiful life!

Simply put, don’t throw any of yourself away.

Nourish and nurture everything about you.No matter what the world says about it.

Your life. Your beautiful chance.

Originally published at https://farzanarijas.substack.com.