The Little Things-Harshit Rawal,IIM SIRMAUR

RESILIENCE

Throughout a person’s life, one faces different obstacles, different challenges of different types. My life too has been full of up and downs related especially to Basketball. In the movie Rocky, he is faced with many obstacles throughout his life, where he must learn to overcome and achieve great success on his own will power. Essentially, I have done the same thing. My basketball career and the difficulties I faced shaped me as the person I am today. I was always taught that basketball was about the love of the game and that it should be fun. Unfortunately, I faced many obstacles that I needed to overcome before I could ever make it big. Let me start from the beginning. I started playing when I was very young. I was very passionate and invested most of my hours to practice. At that time I was not wise enough otherwise I would have known that to have so much attachment and emotional connect to something at such a tender stage could be dangerous. If it does not work out, it scars one for a lifetime. I got selected early to the school team and that really boosted my hopes and dreams. But to much array, I was a benchwarmer for most of the time. I always blamed the situation, coach and anything that could be possibly blamed. That was a low time in my life. I had to take things in my own hands. That’s when I decided to switch schools, I transferred to a relatively less known school but I got to play as a starter there. I really bloomed well, performed to the best of potential and caught some eyes. People were now aware of my talents. Everything was going well; the informal plans for my future that I had written on the last page of my notebook were finally looking achievable. Then the incident happened, I broke my ankle during practice on one unfortunate. I was a minor fracture but it kept me away from my passion for almost an year. A lot can change in an year. But, I bounced back, it took me a little while to get back to the athlete I used to be but constant hard work and perseverance paid off. I played my first national level tournament four years after that. I was happy.