Fear Vs Passion: When Doubt Takes Over

As humans, we enjoy succeeding in everything we lay our hands on. There's a feeling of gratification that flows through your veins when things go your way, especially when you have been struggling for a long time. Just last week, one of my lecturers gave us a test. He'd told us about the test a week before the due date, but we were caught up with other school activities, so we started reading for the test a day before. It wasn't until the day I started reading that I realized my mistake —I should have started reading earlier. The course was a bit bulky, but I managed to read only a few pages, hoping that a miracle would happen. Lo and behold, when I saw the test questions, most of the questions came out from the few pages I read. The smile on my face that moment was unmatched.

However, life has an interesting way of pulling its strings. And one of the ways it does this is through failures. Just as everyone likes to pass and succeed in everything they lay their hands on, no one likes to fail. I have never heard someone come out, beat their chest, and say, “I want to fail. I enjoy failure.” Whether you are a student, a project manager, or a business person, everyone wants to succeed in what they undertake. But the bitter truth is that at some point in our lives, we’ll have to experience failure. Most of the successful and famous people today failed multiple times before they finally made it. Do you think the likes of Mark Zuckerberg just woke up one day, thought of creating Facebook, dived into it, and succeeded without experiencing setbacks? Of course, he experienced failure.

How many times we fail does not matter. What matters is how we let our failure get to us and more importantly, how we come back stronger. For this week’s Sci-fi Multiverse prompt, we are asked to discuss failure. Was there ever a time when you gave up on something you were enthusiastic about because of fear? Did you regret it, and if you had another opportunity, would you have made the same decision? I don’t like to give up on something I am enthusiastic about, especially not because I fear I’d fail. I thought I had channeled my mind to work this way, but something happened last month and I had to give up on something I was enthusiastic about because of fear.

I love playing chess, and everyone who knows me is aware of this. Recently, we concluded Season 20 of the Hive chess tournament. The chess brothers come together to play chess on Lichess, a chess app. Here's how it works: you get randomly paired with other players. Most times, you win if you're paired with players who are lower-rated than you, but sometimes, if you play well, you can manage to beat higher-rated players. In one episode of the just-concluded chess tournament season, I was paired with the best player in the tournament. This player is more than 700 points higher than me. You don't need to know much about chess to understand that a 700-point difference is a lottttt (emphasis on “lottt”). I knew I couldn't possibly win that game. Maybe I would have won if I hadn't given up before the game even started.

Well, I feared that I would lose that game. So, I gave up before the game started. Immediately I saw that I had been paired with the best player in the tournament, I hit the resign button. Maybe I would have lost the game, but if I had continued playing, I am sure I would have learned some things from him. If given that opportunity again, if I could take back the hands of the clock, I would definitely not make that decision.

Thanks for reading.