Pause

The feeling of guilt starts small at first. A twinge of distaste rests on our tongue at the thought of ‘it’. ‘It’ could mean different things to different people. It could be the sport you have been training in for years, the course you enrolled in because you thought it was your future, the university you consider your dream institution, the club you are building from scratch or even a habit you live by. It happens so suddenly that, on a random day, you wake up with the realization that you have stopped liking it. Well, that’s not completely true, if I’m  being honest. I mean, you do wake up but with a slightly different realization – that you have stopped enjoying it. You can still like things you don’t enjoy.

And naturally, in the beginning you deny the existence of that thought. In fact, we all deny the doubt in our minds. We simply don’t want it to be true. It cannot be that, after all the blood, toil, tears and sweat we poured in for months, we ‘suddenly’ stop enjoying it. So, instead of addressing the heavy feeling resting in our hearts, we try to go about it by pretending as if the feeling doesn’t even exist in the first place.

We engage in the same old, familiar routine but, instead of the respite it usually offers, we are left with a strange void. Something feels off. We don’t stay back longer than necessary. The breaks become regular, the curiosity within us slowly extinguishes, and before you know it, we are eager to leave as soon as possible. It turns into a cycle of us trying to avoid reality as much as we can.

When escaping the feeling gets unbearable, we face the crossroads. Either we try to find a way to resolve the situation, or we pretend that everything we have done so far doesn’t matter, and give up. We rarely opt to give up.

Almost everyone ends up attempting to fix the situation, and there are a couple of ways we go about it. We might make a conscious effort to be involved, seek advice from someone, learn from others who have gone through the same and think to ourselves, “Oh, I just need a little bit of motivation and that would set things right.”. This works out pretty well if the reason behind our lack of enjoyment is purely intrinsic. But if it isn’t, then there is a lot more effort that has to be put in by us in order to change the variables outside our control. 

And when those efforts go in vain, that is when the feeling of guilt finally weighs you down. You feel trapped. The future you once imagined sounds distant and at that moment, this revelation doesn’t hurt as much as it should, because you have stopped wishing for it a long time ago. 

But a silent “what if?” exists. It pushes you to dwell on the time you have spent doing it, the expectations built around it, the money invested in it, and the weight of support from friends and family. It forces you to question whether the lack of interest is really a reason to drop out of something after all the factors which have contributed to it. 

And I tell you that it is completely valid to do so. Remember what you do doesn’t reflect who you are. Clinging on to something just for the sake of clinging rarely does anyone involved any good. We often glorify endurance. We falsely believe the harder we work for something, the greater the final reward is. But suffering doesn’t equate to a successful result. Forced obligation stalls our progress and slowly builds resentment. In the future, this might cause us to feel burnt out, stressed, and even depressed.

This doesn’t mean we have to burn bridges overnight. To be fair, you don’t need to walk away from it completely. Take a break to think it through without the pressure of having to perform. Commit to it short-term and see how it goes, or maybe you can even pick it up as a casual hobby. And if the thought of returning back to it still feels overwhelming, completely detach yourself from it during your break and enjoy other things.

Sustenance built on grudging duty doesn’t always guarantee results and honestly, without genuine interest and passion, the journey is aimless.  And when you aren’t enjoying something, it is better to pause and reflect than blindly continue in a direction just for the sake of it. After all, you cannot build anything meaningful in a path that is wearing you down. 

• break
• doubt
• endurance
• guilt
• Pause