The world around us often seems to hold the upper hand to our dreams, our desires, and our destinies. This is because we live in a world of disadvantages. Physical or Mental challenges, Poverty, Oppressive employers, Chronic diseases, Social Marginalization, and so on – disadvantages everywhere. People, thus, allow their entire mind to be set at doubt and discouragement because of the seeming disadvantages that life seems to bring. The weakened heart then tempts us to play the victim and go around seeking sympathy.
There is no doubt we all have problems. Some small, some big. However, we cannot explicitly compare them. Our problems might look small to others and others’ problem might look small us. Hence the onus of our problem lies within us, not anyone else.
And the responsibility to wrestle with the problem is ours and not others’ around us, not even our close one. Our parents or our relatives might come to our rescue and help us, but that would not bring out the qualities we have in ourselves to handle situations.
Beethoven was deaf when he composed some of the world’s greatest symphonies. Horner, who wrote the Odyssey and John Milton, who wrote Paradise Lost, were Blind. Fanny Crosby who wrote few amazing Christian songs like ‘Blessed Assurance’ was blind. Louis Braille who became blind in his childhood, did not gave up and invented the raised dot reading system which can represent any alphabet in not more than 6 dots.
We can observe that one thing was common amongst all of them, they did not seek sympathy, and in fact they fought back with their disadvantages, as our disadvantages can spur us on to greater victories if we refuse to be discouraged by them.
The great people whom we look up to are often those who did not begin with great advantages. They often came from the dregs of humanity. Some were born in dysfunctional homes where they were neglected; alcoholism and even abusive behaviour were the rule.
But they did not let their past or present decide their future. In fact, their Disadvantages often energized their resolve to change not only their own lives, but also of those around them.
Turning a disadvantage into advantage – that’s the challenge, and for the one who believes in himself, it’s always a great opportunity. If one focuses on his disadvantages and gets caught up in self-pity, the world will never see a display of the change in him.
There are innumerable examples of people who stood high in the world as role models. They all achieved greater things which started from nothing. You could be one of them. We all have abilities to fight our problems. As problems are tests for our rigidness and they are not going to destroy us, as, we face problems which are well in the scope of our ability to tackle them.
Someone has very beautifully said “All problems have solutions, and if you do not find a solution to something, then that is not a problem-it is something else”. Hence all our disadvantages are common, we have to live with them but we shall bear in mind that we should be the one who decides our future, not our disadvantages.
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The writer is a correspondent at Youth Ki Awaaz
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