Aren’t the Bad Phases of Our Lives Good for Us?

At different stages of life everyone is hustling for different things.
Starting with a kid in 9th 10th standard, he is hustling to score better or to dance better, sing better or may be play better.

From now we’ll take good efforts but bad results in the coming situations.
Now this kid is in 11th standard. To consider a bad situation he has left playing his favorite sport in which he was best in his school and started learning how to derive a physics formula. All of his time is going in studying physics and all. He gets good marks.
Same things happen in 12th too. Again he gets good marks. Now what is the next thing usually?

“You are good at studies. You should definitely go for the IIT/PMT.” (Though he was good at football too two years ago.)
At this stage his hard work in football was not of much use. His skills in the game didn’t help him get good marks in 12th. But..
*Goes to Kota-Delhi-Patna-Jaipur etc.

He works hard there. Scores good in tests. But somehow he doesn’t get selected. All the ensuing experiences come to all the people involved emotionally.
At this time all the hard work he put in in the whole year seems to be wasted completely.

However, he gathers himself again and with a sense of positivity goes to a college. (To make the situation worse, consider he may not be studying even in a B.Tech/Medical college but just an academic one.)
In the graduation, he enjoys all of his years doing all his favorite things that probably includes studying his favorite subject. And who knows he may have become a football prodigy again.

But.. the guy doesn’t pass his graduation with his other classmates and remains unpassed for the next year or probably for the later year too. And for such a person it is close to impossible to get a job without a degree.
In two years he must not have been sitting idle. He must have done a job or studied some other things and somehow he managed to create a consistent earning source for himself that is sustainable.
At this stage he doesn’t need any degree to get a job or get an increased paycheck. (Let’s not consider he is working anything related to his degree course.)

After this stage, life may not show such failures but the bigger ones but an average person should be mature enough to understand how to accept failures. But as of now there have been so many hustling periods in his life from studying and playing hard in 10th standard to 12th standard to preparation period after 12th to after college hustle.

If that kid, now a man has nothing to do in his job with the things he has done all his life, isn’t the life so far has been wasted? Aren’t the experiences till this day all but just garbage?
What do you think? Do think about this.
The answer seems NO!
But why?
How come the answer remains a NO when all the relevance we try to find out is not visible at all.
Let us see now..

The word I just used is “should” that an average person “should” be able to accept the failures. How does this ‘should’ comes so easily here? Is it just because he is an adult now? Ok. What makes him an adult? His age? Absolutely NO.

The experiences that he has had in his life so far makes him the adult. The adult the world wants to see in everyone around them after a certain age. Would that adulthood be possible if he did not have to make sacrifice of not playing his favorite sport after 10th standard?Or would that adulthood be there if the failure of not getting selected in his dream college wasn’t there. Or would that adulthood be there without the grief he must have suffered when he could not pass his graduation with all his batchmates? And would that adulthood be there if had not faced those vicissitudes when he was out of college without a degree?

The failures, setbacks, bad experiences and hustle have always been there and will always be there but the constant willingness of people for things to happen a certain way is what makes the bad thing bad and the good thing good.

Because of the wiring we engineer in our heads makes us think a certain way. Don’t do this, it is bad. Don’t do this, this is not worth doing. Do this, this is the path to success. At one point of time these teachings do mean everything but at the other they just mean nothing. Like everything else.
Everything meant a lot to that kid at certain point of time but as the time went by those things were of no use to him. But didn’t those experiences made him the so-called “adult”?

The conclusion is that when we look at our life experiences individually we seem to conclude negatively out of those but when we try to perceive life as a whole, that consists all the experiences not only the ones that we want to be there, then we know that it’s not about individual experiences but the sum of all these experiences.