London & Twenty-One

Well where can I start…  The past five days life have been some of the busiest, the most hectic but some of the best days of my life. I have crossed a great many thresholds in the process not the least of which being hitting the magical 21. The knowledge that I can now be tried in court as an adult and be prosecuted for all of my actions or the lack of them is indeed a great pleasure. I have travelled across the globe and left the country where I grew up to come to one to pursue my dreams.

I realised that in our lives we come across numerous instances in which we will be forced to do something which we share no interest in or have a distaste for but when we do these things we allow ourselves an opportunity to fail. We can always claim that we simply didn’t like it or that it wasn’t our cup of tea. But when you have convinced the whole world including yourself that YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING and if you are lucky enough to be presented with an opportunity to do that in that case you allow yourself absolutely NO ROOM for failure. It is a bit like an election in its own right – you make your representations you convince the people that you know the right way ahead and make them believe in you. As Frank Luntz writes in the latest issue of GQ in his piece about Americans and the Obama administration ‘elections are about credibility and accountability’. We prove our credibility when we display conviction in our beliefs and when we showcase that we are ready to take up a challenge and then at the end of that challenge comes the accountability. But one must keep in mind that we are now not accountable only to ourselves but also to all the people who have invested their money in us and to all who have vested their faith in us as well. Family, friends, teachers… just about everyone. You made them believe in you and you need to repay that trust eventually. This has indeed been a crucial lesson which I have learnt on my 21st, it is the best gift I could have ever had. I must say that if one dares to dream, daring to achieve it and pursuing it is the real start….

Baker Street

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Tags: 21, Birthday, London