*Before you read this*
This essay captures how I felt when I initially didn’t qualify for the Paris 2024 Olympics. Although I was later invited due to circumstance, I was indifferent about sharing these thoughts at the time. Now, looking back, I realize how much emotion and heart went into writing this. Keeping it to myself feels wrong, and I believe many people could take something away from my experience of processing disappointment and not getting what I wanted
A quote that has resonated with me over the past few weeks:
“You can’t control the winds, but you can control the sails”.
A beautiful quote that can take you in many different philosophical realms of thinking. For me, currently, I am dealing with the reality of not getting what I want. A special place to be, one not completely foreign to me though.
In these “depressed” states, it brings me solace knowing the flooding waves of love and knowledge that come along for the ride. In trying times, you usually have two choices to make: Keep digging or look up for the light. Now, before you look up, a challenge to myself and whoever is reading this: first look down for the knowledge sprinkled below in the dark.
In the darkest of times people have a tendency to numb themselves or hide away from the loud truths that confront them. If you are willing to journey towards the uncomfortable route, there is a tendency to understand, not only the self, but a dark sliver of our human nature. Now, understanding these moments inevitably comes with having to accept certain parts of ourselves that we don’t either understand or don’t want to.
Currently, the ever present ego, is the truth that I’ve been faced to deal with. One truth many are familiar with, one that shows itself in many different ways, but one nonetheless that is ever present. This is a part of myself that frustrates me and truly makes me feel like a horrible person. The ego can be crude and mischievous in ways that will make you believe in your own lies. To combat this, I lean into the opposing nature, humility, as much I humanly can.
A lesson I’m trying to digest:
Enjoying the fruits of someone else’s success, while feeling life’s cold shoulder.
Now even this statement within itself comes from an incredibly privileged place. There is even an inkling of ego within that statement, which I wholeheartedly embody. But, every novel experience for anyone will come with its sets of discomfort and lessons to be held.
This isn’t a woe is me, but it is a realization that lemons don’t have to be lemonade. Sometimes being withered within the hole that we’ve dug and obtaining needed silence with one’s self is therapeutic enough to be the true reward.
Great newsletter. Such a true quote, “You can’t control the winds, but you can control the sails”