Conviction

Conviction is a funny feeling. You almost always hear it in an positive context. 

You have conviction for where you want to be. 

You have conviction in who you believe you are, what you can be. 

But what if your conviction is for something that doesn’t exist? It used to, but along the way it went awry. You still guard it, so carefully, even Gollum would be put to shame the way you consider it "Your Precious". 

You tell them how much it means to you and pay a deaf ear to anything they might say against it. You know it's escaping, like sand through your fingers, and it keeps flowing away, grain by grain and yet, you run, trying to figure a way for it to stop, finally finding a container you can put what's left in. There are days you don’t even think of it. But the moments you do, you go back to check if it is safe. If it is still locked in that heart shaped box of yours; the one that can only be opened by a key possessed by the very idea in itself. 

You are so sure you’re meant for this, that this was always meant to happen. You try so hard, you give it everything it takes. But it just seems to evade you. It moves 10 metres away with every peek you take. But you convince yourself, "Hey, it didn’t move farther than that now, did it?" in a tone so feeble, only you can hear it in your head. You talk about it to people to assure yourself that it is the truth, that it is not you being unreasonable. Confirmation bias, I tell you. 

Conviction feels like the rope that you have to hold on to, so that you don’t fall. The more you tug at it, the faster it weakens, loosens. It breaks, inevitably, and you fall; a fall where you know you will die the moment your body hits the ground. Thud. The ground doesn’t feel so hard. You’ve fallen back on the sand. You are not dead. But you tell yourself, “No, I am sure I am dead. No, I should have died”. 

Days go by. You see bruises in places that you didn’t see before. Every step seems smaller than the ones before. Every breath feels harder than the ones before. 

Slowly enough, you begin to realize, you were only meant to fall, never to die. You're walking on the beach; on the same sand that once passed through your fingers. Would you even remember the pain? Or how it felt? Or would you say to yourself it made you the person you are right now? 

A small stone amidst all that sand.

( I had written most of this about three years ago. About the time I had seriously begun to consider doing a Ph.D., and wasn't sure if I would manage to make it through. To answer my own questions, I do remember the pain, enough that I never wanted to go back to it again. I also say to myself that it is the reason I am here right now.

An insight I was weirdly wise enough to toy around with then, that I can say for sure now, is that conviction is good but sadly, luck plays a big role. And I am thankful that I was lucky enough to get here after all.)