I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to all today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in 23 years that have experienced between the day and this. I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as we stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential, I stopped other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had realized, and I still alive and I still had a girl whom I adore although no family anymore and I have an old laptop and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I’ll rebuild my life.
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing MBA Examination. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I have friends whose value was truly above rubies, still there are many mysteries in my own life which I may never disclose them even to prove myself.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself or the strength f your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.
You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of what I did to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only uniquely human capacity; it is power that enables us to empathies with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
One of the greatest formative experiences of my life proceeded IIPM, New Delhi; tough it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in other blogs. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest days jobs at Vertex India. There in my office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. While in Belgium I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to European Union by there desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of there injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trails and executions, of kidnappings and rapes. Many of spokespersons were ex-political, people who had been displaces from there homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of there government. Back in Mumbai at Amnesty International, I shall never forget the African torture victims, a young man no older than I was who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as a fragile as a child, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness. And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since.
Everyday I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and public trial were the rights of everyone.
And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you’ll remember this ‘once in life a time will come when your attitude, ego, pride will be crushed and people around will laugh but despite of all you can’t tell them the truth, you have to disclose everything to your parents and thus you kicked out of family too, you’ll die everyday cursing and thinking ‘why me?’ "Then you’ll realize all that does not kill, will make u stronger".
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
- Surya Kanta Jena -
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential, I stopped other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had realized, and I still alive and I still had a girl whom I adore although no family anymore and I have an old laptop and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I’ll rebuild my life.
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing MBA Examination. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I have friends whose value was truly above rubies, still there are many mysteries in my own life which I may never disclose them even to prove myself.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself or the strength f your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.
One of the greatest formative experiences of my life proceeded IIPM, New Delhi; tough it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in other blogs. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest days jobs at Vertex India. There in my office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. While in Belgium I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to European Union by there desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of there injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trails and executions, of kidnappings and rapes. Many of spokespersons were ex-political, people who had been displaces from there homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of there government. Back in Mumbai at Amnesty International, I shall never forget the African torture victims, a young man no older than I was who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as a fragile as a child, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness. And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since.
Everyday I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and public trial were the rights of everyone.
And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you’ll remember this ‘once in life a time will come when your attitude, ego, pride will be crushed and people around will laugh but despite of all you can’t tell them the truth, you have to disclose everything to your parents and thus you kicked out of family too, you’ll die everyday cursing and thinking ‘why me?’ "Then you’ll realize all that does not kill, will make u stronger".
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
- Surya Kanta Jena -
