Disclaimer: This post is part of a series of essays I wrote at the Young India Fellowship. This particular essay was written as a transcript as part of the course titled Arts of Communication.
At fourteen, I was giving a speech in front of some of the country’s finest debaters. There was also a girl in the room who I had taken a fancy to. My team was pro guns and let’s just say our arguments were as weak as gun control in America.
A minute into my speech, my opponents raised an objection that this debate was about real guns and not stun guns about which I had been speaking until then.
I didn’t know what to say. I was expected to speak for eight minutes, I could only do one. It was the most humiliating moment of my life. Additionally, I knew that women really weren’t fans of climaxing prematurely. So on that front too, I was devastated.
After this debacle, I felt that no one would take me seriously. I felt like I had nothing more to lose. On stage, I started speaking what I had in mind, sans any fear. That year, I emerged as one of the best speakers in Chennai and was called to a training camp to represent India. I didn’t get the girl though.
In college, I had the opportunity to perform in front of the most estrogen starved place on the planet. I was holding hands with my co-actress in the first scene and she had that dreamy look in her eyes. The audience went wild hooting. And then she said. Papa…
Embarrassing. Inappropriate. As an actor, I got used to this. And when I subjected myself to these emotions, I didn’t feel the fear of experiencing them anymore.
At twenty, my girlfriend told me that I was the love of her life, that we’d be together forever, that our love would transcend time and continue to live even when we ceased to exist. Two months later, she dumped me.
I was devastated. Getting over her was one of the hardest things I had to do as I had never been so emotionally intimate with anyone before.
I thought I had hit jackpot with her. And now, she had bruised my ego. How dare she? I would keep trying to get back together with her but to no avail. And then, I decided to stop. It was excruciatingly painful. Even after the breakup, she was my support system. And now I was alone. Naked. Vulnerable.
But it was only after I had exposed myself to this vulnerability and had acknowledged the true nature of my helplessness that I began to heal. It was hard but it was done.
Embarrassment. Rejection. Loss.
These are things that evoke powerful emotions in us. But it is the fear associated with them that affects us more than the feeling themselves.
I believe it is important that you expose yourself to these emotions and feel it’s complete breadth.
The only way you can truly overcome fear is by succumbing to it. Gibran had said that the mightiest characters are seared with scars. It is important that you scar yourself. That you frighten yourself so much that you feel fear no more.
When you succumb to fear, you become naked. Your facade is destroyed. And it gives birth to a new person sans any apprehensions. Yes, a person without apprehensions is a fool. But let me tell you this.
Only when you are fool will you find someone who’ll love you unconditionally.
Only when you are fool will that company you’re applying to recognize your genius.
And only when you are a fool will you walk up on stage, narrate the most embarrassing moments of your life and trust that the audience will have it in their heart to love you despite the extraordinarily stupid things you’ve done.
The Black Swan 