Akshad’s Life Update: Here’s Why I’m on a Break From Writing

Picture of the author.

Everything Happens For You, Not to You

This is something I deeply believe in.

I like to believe that whatever shitty things happen to me in life, they’re actually blessings in disguise. Of course, there’s no way to know if it’s true. In fact, it might be just a defence mechanism I’ve developed to cope with life. But that’s okay with me. After all, we’re nothing but the stories we tell ourselves.

Now, if I’m being honest, nothing extremely terrible has ever happened to me. I’ve never been a victim of the horrors people face in this world like hunger, poverty, rapes, assault, wars, etc. But I’ve had my share of lows in life, like each one of you.

To my count, three times I’ve been super-low in life. And in retrospect, each one of those yielded me traits that I’m extremely grateful to have.

The birth of empathy

I was a decent kid in school. I was good at sports and was the kind of kid teachers liked to have in their classes. But… I was not all that happy. That’s because I never felt important to anyone.

The people that I used to hang out with didn’t treat me all that well. They just never made me feel that I mattered. In fact, they actively said and did things that conveyed that I did not matter.

Sure, I was a part of their “group” but I was rarely invited to outings. And even when I was, it felt like nobody would miss me if I wasn’t there.

I felt like an outsider among my own friends. And that’s just… a horrible thing to feel. I remember curling up in my bed and crying when I saw them posting snaps of their outings — outings that I wasn’t invited to. I mean, they didn’t even try to hide the fact that they didn’t invite me.

At the moment, I hated all of it. I was at my lowest. But in retrospect, it’s one of the best things to have happened to me. Because they made me understand what it’s like to suffer — what it’s like to be in pain.

And because of that, I have an above-average capacity for empathy. I have a higher capacity to recognize the subtle and obvious ways people around me are suffering, and a very strong inner itch to make…