To be honest, there is a particular kind of pain that is not loud. No tears or noise. It just sits silently pretty in your chest, like dust on an old shelf, and sometimes something can stir it up, and you find yourself feeling it all over again, like it is still fresh. That pain. That is the kind of pain I associate with an opportunity I lost just after secondary school. That regret has etched itself like a tattoo on my soul.
Just after my final papers in secondary school. A notice was pinned to the school notice board outside the principal's office about a fully funded scholarship opportunity for students who showed academic promise. And it had a deadline of three weeks. I still remember reading it, feeling something light up inside me, and then walking away. Just like that. I told myself I would come back to it. I told myself I had time. Three weeks to me was a whole lot of time.
But I did not come back to it till the three weeks had elapsed. I had totally forgotten about it.
You know what they say, when you are young and think time waits for you until it's too late. I only remembered about it when a classmate of mine, a quiet but determined guy. Not to brag, but someone I did better than academically walked into my house one afternoon with a glow I had never seen on her before. He had applied, and he had been shortlisted. Months later, he sat for the exams and was among those who were awarded the scholarship, and he left for a university abroad.
While I stayed back. Not because I lacked the ability, but because I lacked the urgency. I felt I had time in my hands.
Till today, it still haunts me the most. I was well qualified, but I simply did not try. I treated it as a casual thing. I actually let fear of rejection, that juvenile comfort, plain procrastination, make my decision for me. And the universe moved on without me.
I keep replaying that moment in my head with a lot of what-ifs. But my what-ifs have no useful answers, yet they keep coming.
Well, I learnt one thing with this, and that is that opportunity does not beg or wait. It just finds someone else who is ready. I was not ready. Not because I was incapable, but because I had not yet learned that readiness is something you choose, not something that happens to you.
If I happen to get that door of opportunity again today, I would not hesitate to grab it. I would run toward it with everything I have. Even if it means filling the form with shaking hands. I don’t want to experience that regret of not trying; it is really heavier than the disappointment in rejection.
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