Rising above rejection

The two of us – myself and my colleague Leah – were waiting at the bus stop for our respective buses. Minutes passed and the number of people gathered increased but not a bus was in sight. Soon a bus came and stopped in front of us. Quick to recognise it, I pointed out to Leah that her bus had ultimately come and she could go home before me.

Leah wondered if the bus in front of her was actually for her, as she was so used to the standard red colour bus, while this one was painted bright blue. So stuck she was to her belief that only red bus would serve her purpose, that Leah was not interested to even check whether the bus in front would help her  – something that intrigued me and got me thinking.

How often do we ‘see’ people and decide they are not good enough for us or to be connected with, just because they don’t look the way we think they should or behave like most of us? We find it so comforting to deal with the sameness and routine of life that something or someone slightly different from us unsettles us.

I still cannot forget how my classmates sidelined me as I belonged to a sub-sect, albeit the same community speaking the same language. I would not be taken into group games and taunts would be thrown at me in the absence of the teachers, whereas the teachers saw what I was made of and unanimously selected me to be the school pupil leader for that year.

An otherwise well-settled single woman shared how usually friendly women of her neighbourhood suddenly huddled together during festival times excluding her, for she did not have a husband. The girl she adopted gets ignored at gatherings, her cousins not considering her worth talking to or going out with, at times.

The mother and daughter duo seem to be on a never-ending journey, using their time to learn interesting things, involving themselves in worthy pursuits, empathising with others in the same boat, all of which has helped them to discover hidden strengths within themselves. Consequently, they have grown resourceful to many people around them.

Intolerance and rejection are two sides of the same coin, I believe, that has been going around in our society over ages. The former gives rise to the latter and most often it is unfair to the one at the receiving end, however justified it seems to the doer.

Rejection cannot be wished away, so the antidote to this malady is to develop our coping skills, in the sense learn to wear slippers instead of expecting the world to be carpeted. Maybe a good sense of humour is required to realise that the perpetrators are not worth bothering about and the time spent to tackle them is better invested elsewhere.

Rising above rejection takes us to a new lofty level just as an ugly caterpillar transforming into an attractive butterfly or a lotus blooming out of dirt becomes a cynosure to all around.

Published in Deccan Herald, dated Saturday 5th March 2016