Hidden Corners tag:blog.lib.umn.edu,2011-04-07:/pavul002/cbsbioblog//13719 2011-04-15T22:38:43Z Live, Laugh, Learn Movable Type Enterprise 4.31-en Failure and its friends... tag:blog.lib.umn.edu,2011:/pavul002/cbsbioblog//13719.286701 2011-04-15T21:38:22Z 2011-04-15T22:38:43Z First, I wanted to apologize to my readers (if I have any at this point) about my last entry. I realized how much my last entry sounded more like an introduction to a novel rather than a blog entry. Granted,... pavul002 First, I wanted to apologize to my readers (if I have any at this point) about my last entry. I realized how much my last entry sounded more like an introduction to a novel rather than a blog entry. Granted, one of my goals has always been to write a novel, but more of that for another time. I might expand on the boy later on. So, stay tuned!

I remember during my orientation at the U of M, we had a speaker named Jermaine Davis, and to this day, I can distinctly remember his words resonating in my mind. "There are adders, subtracters, multipliers, and dividers in this world, make sure you surround yourself around adders and multipliers..." I had an experience in the past few days in my life that reminded me of his quote, and how true it has been. I had a person, a friend you could say, that picked on my negatives and failed to look at my positives. He/she has been a subtracter in my life. A divider. He/she took my confidence, questioned my judgement, and in the process ruined my respect for him/her. I am not upset with him/her as much as I am upset with myself. I made a bad judgement call. I should have assessed the situation first. I should have a lot things. But, in the end, it's important to remember that we are all human. We all make mistakes, and we have to be able to learn from them. Failure is part of life, and we have to be able to accept failure. If you are to say that you would be so careful to the point where failure won't affect you, then you failed to fail. You failed by default.

Don't live your life afraid of failure. Live your life as though failure is an inevitable reality.

]]> If I could just live under the stars again... tag:blog.lib.umn.edu,2011:/pavul002/cbsbioblog//13719.286306 2011-04-14T01:08:20Z 2011-04-14T02:02:23Z It was a beautiful day, a true rarity in Minnesota. As I sit here by the window of the nearest cafe listening to Ingrid, and frantically typing my first entry before I lose my motivation, I was suddenly reminded of... pavul002 It was a beautiful day, a true rarity in Minnesota. As I sit here by the window of the nearest cafe listening to Ingrid, and frantically typing my first entry before I lose my motivation, I was suddenly reminded of how much I miss the joy of being a child. I would have never wasted this beautiful day staring through a microscope at tiny worms, trying to solve the mysteries of ALS. I would instead be playing hide-and-seek with my sister and my cousins, enjoying the sweet mangoes, swimming in the nearest river, playing cricket and football (not American football, mind you), and running around the barn trying to get into as much mischief as possible. It's a simple life filled with no worries except whether I would get to be the batter next or if I would get the sweetest of the mangoes. And at night, after a whole day of happiness and occasionally being yelled at by my mother, I would be sleeping under the stars with a blankie on the side to ward off the monsters. It always amazes me sometimes how much this has changed in the past ten years. I can no longer see the stars. They are gone, and so was my childhood.

Whenever I have a tough day, I think about how beautiful it all was. And every time, I am reminded of the boy as a transition back to my reality. He makes my stars disappear, and face the reality. He stares at me like a guilty nightmare, making me feel helpless and sad all of a sudden. He is partly the reason why I am here, why I can afford to sit in a cafe in United States. He lives in a hidden corner in the crevice between my childhood and my adulthood...where is he now, you ask? He is with the stars, looking down on me, waiting for the time when I can see the stars again.

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