Destiny

Destiny always plays games with you.

It never gives you what you want.

Remember: never let someone else’s negativity drag you down.

Also, the one thing you keep running from is always around the corner. So stop running and just face it. Why be a coward? You are not weak. You are strong. So show that strong personality in front of everyone. Don’t say you can’t, because we all are strong. We all can!!

What running actually costs

Here is the thing about avoiding something. It never stays the same size while you avoid it.

The conversation you did not have in March is a much heavier conversation by September. The bill you did not open is worse for having sat there. The apology gets harder every single week you leave it. Avoidance is the only strategy I know that charges you interest for using it.

And there is a second cost that is easier to miss. Running takes energy. Constant, low-level, background energy - the kind you do not notice you are spending until the thing is finally dealt with and you suddenly have your evenings back. Most people carrying something they are avoiding are permanently a little tired and cannot work out why.

Facing it is usually the cheaper option. It just does not feel that way from a distance, because from a distance you are comparing a definite unpleasant hour against a vague ongoing dread, and dread is very good at hiding its own price tag.

The comments will come

One thing you have to do: believe in yourself and stay positive. Don’t get affected if someone passes a rude comment about you. Just smile. Yes, just that. It will be the greatest reply you can give that person. Follow this simple rule and start seeing the change.

On the contrary - if you cry, snap back, or start fighting, it is your loss. Everyone around will watch and enjoy it. And when you finally realise what you did, it will already be too late.

A calm response is not weakness. It is the one response nobody can use against you later.

On not showing your weak side

Never show your weakness in front of everyone. I repeat, NEVER. No matter how close you get to someone, be careful about who gets the unguarded version of you.

I want to add something to that, though, because I wrote it in a harder year than the one I am in now.

There is a difference between guarding yourself in a room full of people and guarding yourself from every single person alive. The first one is sense. The second one is a slow, quiet loneliness that you will not recognise as loneliness, because it feels like strength.

Be selective. Two or three people, maybe. Not the group chat, not the office, not whoever happened to ask how you were doing. But do not make the list zero. A person who has nobody to be honest with is not protected. They are just alone with it, and every heavy thing gets heavier when it is carried in silence.

Choose carefully. Then actually let those few people in.

Always say to yourself: I am strong. No one can beat me. I am the best. I can do it.

And then behave as though it is already true, because that is the only way it ever becomes true.

Fear shrinks when you look at it

One last observation, from having tested this more times than I would like.

Nearly everything I ran from turned out to be smaller than the version in my head. Not painless - smaller. The dreaded conversation took eleven minutes. The confrontation I lost sleep over was over before I had finished the speech I had prepared.

That is not luck. It is that imagination has no upper limit and reality does. A thing you are avoiding grows to whatever size your fear has room for, and it only returns to actual size at the moment you face it.

Which means facing it is not just brave. It is the only way to find out how big it really was.

-kashish