Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.
Mahatma Gandhi
We had this English
teacher back at prep college. She was one of those people who spoke English
with a much thicker accent than anyone you've ever seen on tv, it makes you try
hard to not say to yourself that she's overdoing the slang. Notoriously famous
for grammatical strictness, lack of aiming capabilities and fashion
faux-pas-ing, she was a constant source of ridicule and mean laughter amongst
us students, who seemed at the time to always be on a vigilant search for
faults and mistakes performed by this woman.
Our English as a
class (save a person or two, and I'm not one of them) never did meet her
standards. As were our knowledge of Australian addresses and our selection of
names to address letters to for in-class formal letter writing exercises.
So one day in class,
after an essay exercise she told us to complete several days ago, she called us
one by one to the teachers desk to discuss our essays with her. And one by one,
we went to the desk, and one by one went back to our seats, resuming our quests
to reach Australia for tertiary education or simply to continue sleeping as our
classes often went to late afternoons during those days.
My turn soon came
and walking to her desk, I already saw the red streaks before I sat down on the
chair. On the corners, over the messy handwriting, in between words,
everywhere. Looks like my essay has been bloody slaughtered again. If it had a
voice its probably shouting out to be euthanized as quickly as possible. And I
sat on the chair, my eyes fixed on the paper.
And we went through
the essay, bit by bit, her voice always going somewhere into my subconscious,
never really reaching my thought centers. And towards the end of the
discussion, she said " because you try hard…".
What? What did she just say? I couldn’t remember
what she was saying right before those words, but a bit later that day, after a
lot of thinking, I remembered what she
said. She said "you deserve better…because you try hard…" (and she
said something about how I needed to improve on several things so I can get
better marks and not stay on the same plateau of low marks forever)
Right after she said
those words, I felt as if I was caught off guard. And for the first time in a
very long period, I looked at her face and into her eyes. I felt really
touched. I actually felt like crying in front of her. And so I looked down
instead, nodding my head vigorously at every pause of her sentences.
Maybe you, dear
respected reader are confused as to why I reacted in such a way at that part of
the statement she made. Maybe you, dear reader think that this teacher must
have never uttered a single word of praise and hope to her students that upon
hearing that I deserved better, I felt so flattered and proud my vanity felt so
happy it was making me cry.
But no. She actually
said to me something I really craved to hear at that time. By those words, it
felt that she saw me. She didn’t see my marks, or my smile, or my laughter.
She saw that I was
trying. And indeed, during that time I was really trying. Then, and years prior. Day and night for a
shot at learning medicine in some faraway land.
Sad, but no one
before her has ever explicitly expressed that to me. No one has commended my
efforts before her. No one ever. Everyone just wanted results; first place,
second place, grades, trophies, medals, certificates, money.
It shows our
pre-occupation with results, and our lack of appreciation for effort and
struggle. Because that’s what we like, we feel like if something doesn't come
off something, its not worth much. Because in the end nothing good happened.
But I beg everyone
reading this post up till here to open our eyes and see the struggle and
efforts of others. And appreciate them. And acknowledge their hard work.
Because in a world where everything is fast and competitive, we often forget
this. We often say 'good job' and forget
to pat people on their backs for their 'good effort'. We tell people to 'study hard!!' and we don’t
say to them 'take a break, you've studied hard'.
We forget that there
is some wisdom in the road trip saying "what matters is the journey, not
the destination".
With this I am
making a public statement that I shall try to wake up early tomorrow for
orthopaedics ward rounds !
Sincerely yours
Azfar
