A Penny For Your Thoughts.

It was another parents' teachers meet. I was not looking forward to it. I knew I hadn't made the top 10. I had missed out by 1 mark. That meant my name would not be on the board. What followed was one of the most significant moments of my life. It shaped the way I looked at things for a very long time. Listening to my mom talk with my teacher and expressing her disappointment was not a pleasant experience. I couldn’t hold myself. I broke down while the discussion was happening. And all my mom told me was to stop it and that I was embarrassing her with everyone else watching. I love my mom and she’s pampered me to no end but there have been moments where I wished she did something different.  Deep down I knew I could never match her expectations. In the end, that was what I was afraid of the most. I was satisfied with my marks. To an extent. But I knew I could never reach the heights which my brother did. It wasn’t just my mom. I didn’t want to let anyone down. I felt the same w...

“I’m here for you.”, “My DMs are open.”, “Feel free to talk to me.” I’m sure most of us have come across people posting some variation of the above phrases. What does it mean to be there for someone ? What can one do to help someone going through a difficult time ? I don’t know. I am not questioning the sincerity of the above phrases. People genuinely want to help but don’t know how. The least we can do is listen to someone, right ? And we want to tell everyone that it’s okay. You don’t have to go through this alone. I’m here for you. You can always talk to me. We want to comfort them to the best of our abilities.  What if they did talk to us and we brushed it aside ? What if we were too busy to reply and forgot about it ? What if we left them on ‘seen’ because we were bored ? What if we put in such little effort that they didn’t feel like talking more ? We’re all guilty of doing one of the above. It’s important to understand that nobody will be comfortable texting you and saying t...