Failed My Way To Success

• Sanjana Nambiar, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2015

I looked in the mirror, at my woebegone face. Miserable and sorrowful. My edges were fading and I wilted like a dying flower. Failure, was written all over me. I failed at life, I failed at being a good friend, I failed at being successful and I failed to be the person I wanted to be. The purpose of my life was shadowed and concealed and the longer that I felt this failure, the more eclipsed my motivation towards life and my ultimate purpose became.
Every action that I committed, became mediocre. Incessant thoughts chattered in my head, and pulled me deeper into a hole. Life went on, day by day. Happiness and joy no longer existed, I led a daunting life. Darkness surrounded me, and radiated onto others who ignored me. My life became a mundane task that I had to endure and survive through.
Then one day I was born…
All these years I had been dying, the physical body and the psychological body were deteriorating. I was living a life in denial. Then one day I fell… I fell and hit my head falling into a deep coma. When I awoke from the slumber, I was a new being in a new world. My eyes opened to luminous radiance. Everything glowed with immense beauty. Sounds filled my ears, sounds that I had not heard in years, genuine noises, the sounds of birds, human voices, footsteps, breathing, and even my own pulsating heat beat, I no longer heard the buzz of prattling thoughts. Every noise, was like a beautiful piece of music that flowed and disappeared into the silence. They were manifested in the space and then drifted off into the silence. As I listened to the beautiful sounds, I realised that I could see something not seen before. I noticed the space. Space, that held manifested things in it. Eternal space were everything occurs. Life and death happen in this space. If the whole of earth was gone, all that remains would be this eternal space.
While basking in the glow of this new intelligence, I realised that I had found my purpose. Like every human being, my purpose was to live and bloom in this beautiful nurturing world. The purpose of every being is to be present, however humans became corrupt. Humans became self-centred, power hungry, and consumed by incessant thoughts.
As I lay on the hospital bed, enjoying the actions happening in the space, I began to question the life that I used to lead. Why do we follow the futile guideline of society? Why do we act in such a mediocre and selfish way? What is the actual purpose of life that we have been living? Why can’t we live in the present?
I lay, relishing life and feeling blessed towards everything, I realised that failure led to this awareness, my failure led to my success as a true being on this entrancing earth. I was reborn and born as a successor. Be Present…