By Partha Chakraborty-
“A triangular alien with three holes,” that is how we described the earliest photographic evidence of the existence of our son, sometime in July of 2005. The fetal MRI looks eerie, positively non-human in proportions within a body that was probably no bigger than a shrimp my wife scrupulously avoided at that time. We got to turn this alien into a complete human – I remember us thinking. Eighteen years since, that tadpole is brimming with quiet confidence as he stands taller than us, empathy rings loud in his voice, and dream oozes out of his eyes. We could say that we have successfully turned a triangular alien, nee tadpole, into a human being.
There was a time I used to tell him something to the effect that “I am teaching you to be a human, but it is you who is teaching me how to be a father.” Thankfully, and certainly, he has outgrown that learning phase – and that makes my chest grow tenfold in pride. Still, a dad can never outgrow his desire to remind a son of the lessons he has already learned. Ad-infinitum and ad-nauseam. That is the daddest thing to do; it has been so through the annals of time and the rotations of the planet.
The first lesson I want to remind is a lesson you already learned the hard way – “Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts,” [Winston Churchill]. I remember when you came bouncing up the steps and announced that you just were admitted through what is undoubtedly the most rigorous admissions process in the country. A few months later I remember you all glum, confused and crestfallen, shut off in your room, when the same venue declared you were barely worth a second chance. You were barely fourteen at that point. Fast forward to today, you are on a clear and unambiguous path to earning two separate accolades from two prestigious places, and well on your way to a profession that makes you happy, all excited about the days next, and feel worthy. The years in between saw the young you, barely a teen, suffer from ills of dejection and rejection; but you kept the fire burning inside and found the right course. You were taking in water, but you were not flailing; you were down, but never out, you were blinded in fog of institutional apathy and misguided priorities that slowed you down, but never looked for an off-ramp. You never let success, or failure, stop you on your track. You embodied Churchill’s saying once more – “Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” You were open to falling again, and failing, even after a big setback that followed your previous triumph. In so doing, you were ready to shed the old skin, emerge from the pupa of old wounds and fly away – as gloriously as a butterfly into the colors of sunrise. You are where you are today only because you were ready, willing, and able to discard a decaying self to search of a vibrant, engaged, curious, and better, new you.
That took some guts, a lot of it.
In the process, you embodied what Einstein said, “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” I wish that remains the mantra of your life, and I also wish that you always remain a work in progress. No, I am not wish limits on your efforts so you can never reach your goals. Quite the contrary. I am hoping that you adjust your dreams farther ahead every time you are close to reaching the last peak. Or that, you find a new venue for the audacity of your hope and efforts to bear fruit. I hope you reinvent yourself frequently, treating your last conquest as just another entry in your calling card as you go knocking on doors to make possible your next big and hairy project. Never be satisfied with where you are, but do not define yourself by one metric only. No job is too small for you to be hands-on if needed, and no job is too big for you to aspire. When you start something new, you will – arguably – start small, and insignificant within your new domain. But your lived experience, and hopefully that of your parents as you have seen with your own eyes, have taught you the significance of that insignificance. Days of putting your nose to the grind, again, will feel harder, especially since you have already achieved something. But treat your past success as a body of knowledge, experience, and relationships that help you launch the new you – and presumably some reserves to help extend the runway the next time around – no less, but no more either.
It would have been easier to coast, and walk into the sunset, for sure, but would it have been more satisfying?
You should not let a setback define you, nor should you let others define you as a failure. You have already gone through the process once, so the memory is fresh. Over the course, of future years, there will be agents of nefarious interests who want to impose an identity – and presumed baggage that goes with it – on you. Stand firm on your right to define who you are. Identity is a personal privilege and not one that anybody else has anything to do with it. Speaking for myself, outside of professional existence, I have three identities – I am a father and a husband, I am an American and I am an Indian. I will not choose your identities, but I have a good sense, that yours will be a variation of that. By the same token, never let identity peddlers tell you that you are a victim or a victimizer. Both assertions carry an axiom that you are not sovereign of yourself, that you are to be judged only by the accident of birth. Treat these agents with contempt, loathing, and fear.
We never wished any superhuman qualities on you, we only wanted you to be a more perfect self than we have ever been / will be, in every way. We wanted you to try and try again, be aware, be curious, be respectful, be courteous and gallant at the right occasion, be affectionate, be circumspect, have a healthy skepticism about everything, provide leadership with vision and empathy, be an upright citizen of the world, be a better man every day than the day before. These wishes are starting to bear fruit, as we see it now. We could not be happier, or more proud.
As your biggest cheerleader, I am the first to admit that you are no He-Man – and there never was /is / will be an expectation of such. We wanted you to be a more complete (hu)man, and you are. He-man is a toy; it cannot move and is replaceable without consequence. The last thing anybody should want upon their son is to lose agency on their own being.
A complete (hu)man never was a He-Man and never shall be.
