My favorite quote as a child was Nothing is Impossible.
Roughing it out as a thin immunity deficient girl against the big pretentious know it alls of the village made me embody the spirit of the quote, even if in all probability I hadn’t even heard it.
In middle school, somebody reminded me that even the word impossible literally spells out as I’m possible. That’s when I woke up to the truth I was always living anyway. It not only got me smiling but I revelled in the afterglow for years.
High school opened the vistas to poetry and Frost. The Road Not Taken seeped itself into every bone of mine marinating them with the courage to face the complexities of the journeys waiting to be undertaken .
Sometime in 1999, a gorgeous Ronan Keating had only to go and sing When the going gets tough, the tough get going and that’s when the jigsaw puzzle that I am, began to solve itself.
At 18, I put together a quote that was all ME. They stopped being 4 random quotes from 4 different stages of my life. They amalgamated into one beautiful anthem that scripted every moment, every lesson, every story, every epic saga henceforth, from the time I officially stepped into adulthood.
When the Going gets Tough, the Tough get Going on Roads Not Taken. Coz Nothing is Impossible for Me. I Am Always Possible!
It single-handedly inspired and influenced me to
- go to school everyday despite having a stutter
- climb a guava tree at 5,
- speak to a large gathering at 6,
- get though life in a city school from 8 through 15,
- take a bus alone to the suburbs at 15,
- choose a road-less-travelled option for a career at 21,
- stop killing myself at 24,
- not be afraid of men
- haul my ass and appear for an interview with a designer who soon turned to become my mentor,
- open my own business at 27,
- leave an abusive partner at 29,
- confront my abusers at 30,
- say No to marriage and kids at 32,
- scale up to a retail business at 33,
- go on a silent retreat
- quit business at 36,
- try my hand at everything my heart fluttered at,
- fall in love again at 37,
- travel solo to a new continent
- pick up the pieces after the breakup at 40
- choose to stand by me and keep the promise I made to myself to always choose life over death.
Nothing extraordinary there, I know. But for 27 years, my anthem has been the gun I fire every single time I get the jitters because I was born with anxiety. I never allowed that to become my weakness or stop me from going wherever I wanted to go, whoever I wanted to be, whatever I wanted to do or however the outcome turned out to be.
Fear has always been a part and parcel of being Lulu by default. But being the toughie and getting up and going towards the impossible roads with curiosity as my ally is what Lulu became by design.
Nature sent me here with a trigger button always at ON but it forgot that Nurture designed an override switch and hid it where it never bothered to look; my fearless heart.
And that has made all the difference.
Care to drop a tiny pearl from the ocean of your mind?