Self Criticism

Sometimes some days just give you an insight into yourself. When that insight becomes too deep, you tend to get confused. My confusion for the day revolved around self-criticism. Whether it is good, bad or ugly. Smart people would say it is good in moderate measures. Well, my question to you is: How moderate is moderate? How exactly one measures such things I have no idea, but what  I do realize is that these ideas leave me terribly confused and sometimes even, leave me with a feeling of self- loss.

Before I get something, I am scared if I'll achieve it, if I'm capable of it, if I deserve it and so on.
After I get it, I rewind, review and recall and still criticize myself about things not done, undone or partly done.

So here's a note to myself:

Do not beat yourself about things wrongly done. Mistakes are human and everyone's allowed their share. Learn from your errors and move on. Do not beat yourself blue over it. The more you criticize yourself, the worse you get. Keep room for improvement but do not take everyone's each word to heart and allow self-doubt to creep in!


The reason why I made this note public is because such thoughts were abound in my head even at the end of today: Today, I secured my first job. Today, I became a content-writer at Zomato. Today, I got my first offer letter even before I graduated. Today, I became a Zoman. Today, I nailed it!

Yet, today, I allowed this negativity to dwell in me.

Be proud of yourself and what you do. Allow mistakes to happen, because along with mistakes happy things also happen!

Reminence of Sanctity

Gone are the days when people compared educational institutions to religious places and the holiness of the former was epitomized therein. But as the wheel of time has rolled ahead, the sanctity of these places has not only been undermined, in some cases even demeaned. The reasons for this are numerous and the purpose of my writing is not to delve into those.

I attend a Catholic College, run by reverred nuns we learn discipline which is synonymous with their personality and etiquette follows close at hand. Out of sure habit, I step into the church which stands tall outside my college building, everyday.

I step in, bow my head, murmur a word of prayer and leave. I seldom sit down to pray for long because those few minutes make me feel peaceful enough.On some days, I see a group of students in the church, as they attentively hear the Mass proceedings as a priest conducts them. These are the students from the school, which shares the campus with our college.

This morning, as I entered I was greeted by a rather unusually pleasant sight. One that I had seen: in movies, read about: in books, alone. I had never experienced such a scene and it was a splendid one at that!

I saw little girls, most probably girls in class four or five, at the Confession Boxes. They knelt keenly by the 'window' and spoke eagerly with the Father on the other side. Even that practise had a disciplined conduct because the girls stood in a line on the side and maintained safe distance so as not to eavesdrop!

It was probably not extraordinary, but the fact that I don't see it regularly, made it so!
I started to think what these little ones would have to share with the priest. How strange are the ways of the world, we can tell strangers what we can't tell our dear ones.
My trail of thoughts led me on and I realized that maybe psychiatrists came into being from this practise itself. I think it is nice for the children to be exposed to such experiences. It goes a long way, in their life. I can say that because I didn't go to such a school where we had someone with whom we met for the sole purpose of lightening the load of our conscience. I am not complaining, because undoubtedly we had wonderful teachers who fit into this role very well. But what matters is when you tell your mind: "Ok, so this is it! Such-and-such day and so-and-so time we shall unload our heart to this person" because we sometimes feel closer to the people we don't know at all.