Rage and Courage

Author’s note: Welcome to Edition 13. I write about leveraging a concoction of rage and courage to tackle adversity in life. Please lmk your thoughts about this essay. I also write a second newsletter with in-depth commentary on how new-age Indian businesses make money (Newsletter link here).

Matryoshka dolls (Russian dolls) are a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size. These are placed one inside the other and so on till you are left holding the tiniest wooden doll. This is how rage sits within courage which sits within rage till you are left with a clenched fist radiating anger and self-belief. The interplay of rage and courage (in dolls) is stashed behind a glass you break for an emergency.

That emergency may never arise and so you live without unwrapping the rage-courage dolls. It’s the safest outcome but a life enveloped with fear does nothing for you. You live with caution, move with hesitation and take tiny steps with your head on a swivel. Ambitions are neutered and courage limited to a sports field with friends. Life speeds by and you bemoan reckless driving. You could never drive that way. You never had the fortitude to drive inches from road dividers and rearview mirrors. And so you wait for a comet sighting, a full moon night, any decipherable distinguishable signal that it’s okay to chase your dreams.

If you never spot a signal, what do you do? If you miss the flash of light or the yellow orb in the sky, where do you go? You wait for another signal, an act of God, a declaration that it’s your time to throw caution to the wind. You wind up doing nothing and become a nobody if you choose to wait. You waste away and whittle your life down to bawdy jokes recited at a rundown bar. Your life is a joke and you are a comic struggling to hit the right chords in your delivery.

It can feel like nothing is going your way. It feels like hitting every red light in a 5 mile stretch when you’re late for a date. You want to impress and then you knock down a glass of wine that spills-stains the white table linen. The colour will wash out but your spirit is coloured with uncertainty. Your moves are tentative and your intentions foggy. And when it seems like you are beyond redemption, you can reach for the past and recall the times you dared.

You bring back memories of times you climbed walls sight unseen. You channeled every slight to feed your rage and acted without restraint. The rules did not apply and you made it all up as you went along. The roads were neverending but you would scorch the asphalt believing that your dreams were just ahead. You would lean on rage-courage in equal parts to move forward. Movement was in fits and starts but you progressed. 

Reservoirs of rage-courage lifted you when you were younger. You would use the chip on your shoulder to become better. You teased failure. A walk to the end of the precipice only to sprint back the other way. You faced adversity in the face and lived to tell the tale. The path to success was covered with prickly nestles but so was the path to abject failure. You persevered because that was the only way through. All that mattered was winning.

People advise you to use positive reinforcement to chase dreams. They guide you that what worked for you till now cannot take you any further. Take the sage advice and assume it is undeniable fact. Once you assume, remind yourself that it holds true only for their lives.Your life is different. Your path is differentiated and so is your eventual ambition. And so, why would you walk in anyone else’s steps? You carve out your own even if you stumble and fall down. This path in the squidgy mud means stepping into quicksand every now and then. You continue undeterred because that is the only way to your dreams. This is why you make decisions that appear stupid to the shortsighted.

If you are lucky, your life will be chaotic from the outside in. Everyone sees an unending dust storm and a struggle that would tire even the most earnest. This is the opportunity of your lifetime. You can wreak havoc from the inside out with a concoction of rage and courage. This solution cannot be bottled or stored in a cool cupboard. It is mixed with impunity and a healthy disrespect of everything considered the norm.

Rush towards this chaos and do not hold back. Plunge into the abyss and leave the safety ring at home. The churning waters will strike fear in everyone else except for the ones who were raised in them. You have to go deeper and deeper till you can come out from the other side. You trust in yourself and know you can survive every one of life’s vicissitudes. You got yourself here and you can take yourself wherever you need to be.