Be strong
One of the most important lessons of life
--
The year was 2010, I was 18.
For a few days, I wandered in the streets of Kathmandu from 7 am to 4 pm without money and plan. At home, my parents thought I was at college. But there was no college. I had failed the first semester and the college has kicked me out. I didn’t have the guts to inform my parents.
This was eight months after a girl had kicked me out of her life — another major failure.
Days of aimless wandering had tired me. I would walk out of home at 7 and walk in a direction until I got could not walk anymore. I would rest for a while then walk again…and again…until it was four.
But I couldn’t think of stopping it. People recover with time, but I didn’t. I got worse. I had no hope that things would get better. The worst part was that I had no conscience of hope nor did I have the sense that I could make things better. I left home each day with a blank mind and a heavy heart. And the mind got emptier and the heart denser with each day.
I lived with a dense and dark feeling. I had given up the hope that any girl would ever show interest in me. I thought every girl was my previous girlfriend. I got scared whenever I saw a girl walking in the street with a boy. I feared every time my parents came near me. I wanted to cry whenever I imagined my parents knowing about my state.
I look back and I see that I was in a horrible place. At home, I tried my best to pretend everything was normal. I did that by spending most of my time in my room with my guitar.
I look back closer and I see that I could have ended up worse if the internet and the iPhone hadn’t come into our house and I hadn’t spent time with my grandfather.
My grandfather is a self-made individual. He pulled himself from the clutches of poverty to end up retiring as a Supreme Court judge. He lives by the virtues of pragmatism, curiosity, integrity, and hard work. A reserved individual, he doesn’t like talking much and prefers to spend time with himself. He never talked much with me or anyone else in the…
