My Worst Fears

-

Life me jis cheez se bhagoge,
wo saali jhakk maar ke tumhare peeche aayegi.
Aur jis cheez ke peeche padhoge,
wo tumse aur door chali jaayegi.

I don’t really agree with the second one,
because it just says that passion is useless.
But I do believe in the first one.

Everybody says, “Face your fears,”
nobody says why.
Because most of them don’t even know what they are trying to tell;
they are just throwing words around.

All my life, I tried steering clear of my worst fears:
Maths, people, and being cringe
(also lizards).

And guess what,
I ended up having to face every single one of them.
Not because my plans tanked,
well, true, but the universe has a funny way of functioning.

I feared maths,
but loved reading stories.
I chose commerce without maths in class 11,
just so I could somehow escape it.
But guess what,
it came masked under accounts, economics, and statistics.
Also, when I decided to go for government exams,
the weightage of maths was 25%.

In the end, I ended up facing it.
I worked so hard on it
that it became one of my strongest subjects.
And even now, in daily life,
I do not fear adding up the bill.

Another fear of mine was people.
Not that I am some misanthrope or something,
I simply am an introvert.
But the world doesn’t revolve around me;
staying quiet means missing out on opportunities.

I stayed quiet for a while.
I wrote stuff in silence without sharing it with the world.
What if someone judged my thought process?
What if I made a grammar mistake?
I wouldn’t even tell someone that writing is my hobby
because it sounded performative.

But now what?
My career literally depends on my writing and communication skills.

On the same arc is my fear of being cringe,
and really, this kept me caged for the longest time.
I didn’t want to be called a “wannabe influencer.”
I even deleted my Instagram multiple times,
even though I loved posting there
and liked showcasing my photography and self-portraits.

Now I love telling my most embarrassing moments,
my biggest failures, and most important takeaways,
in the hope that someone else might relate to this
and not hold back.

I know this will sound cliché,
but be your unfiltered self, and the world will find a way to live with it.
Don’t bend and break yourself just to fit somewhere you don’t belong,
and never, ever hold yourself back.

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