An Angel of Confidence

I was watching TV for a change yesterday and while switching channels, I came across a movie where the actress was giving an Oscar performance with her water works. I paused to find out the reason of her grief. It appeared that the actress was playing the role of an actress on the sets and after forgetting her lines for the third time she broke down and completely lost her confidence. To add to her despair, she overheard people on the sets laughing at her inability to sound coherent. So acute was her aggravation of non performance that she shut herself in her boudoir and refused to continue with the shootings until a psychiatrist had to be fetched to boost her inspiration. I switched off the TV and sighed.

Now, this is possibly an exaggeration of any such situation but this rang a bell in my mind. A decade ago, I was a Karate student waiting to perform for my belt test and I was so nervous that I kept forgetting the “Katha” (A sequence of karate moves required to pass a belt test), until I was asked to step aside and come back later. I was aghast and I became certain that I would never get my blue belt in Karate “Wado” that day.

Backstage, a senior green belt student came up to me and passed me a bottle of water and asked me why I was hyper-ventilating. I related my problems and mentioned how I felt I should leave Karate altogether. He calmly talked to me, asking me if I liked learning Karate and how long I had practiced for the test. Eventually, somewhere along the line of conversation I realized that nothing mattered to me but the fact that I was learning karate, the test was to celebrate my knowledge in it. After a few more minutes of pep talk I walked right into the arena, gave an amazing performance and won myself a silver medal that day; along with my blue belt.

Eventually, though I did finally stop learning Karate after getting the blue belt. But, now whenever I think of winning, I realize that I can win, if only there is one person in the world who can believe that I can. And if there isn’t an angel in the room, than that angel has to be me! Life is all about feeling good about who you are, what you can do and what makes you happy. We have the power and the weapons right there, within ourselves.

But, on a side note, it’s important to accept the fact that we are not superhuman and sometimes there are moments when putting one step ahead can feel like the riskiest thing to do on earth. Here, we indeed become dependent on others for our actions. Sometimes, acceptance by others becomes such an integral part of ourselves that we forget where and when the line was established and that’s when our lives, our happiness and our destination are handed over.

We meet a lot of people in our daily life. People whose comments can change our course of life if we are not confident of our own actions, so it’s very important to connect to our inner strength in such a way that lives no space for self doubt or be careful who we hand down our scepter to. So, here I must say that we should believe in ourselves. We, and only we, are responsible for the happiness we bring to this world and into our life.

"Believe all, trust a few and do wrong to no one!"