Over Compensation

If you have a high life goal and a low beginning that's good, says Kopmeyer (2006), in his book, Here’s Help.

He says, “That’s good? Why?”

Because people who must overcome difficulties have more need and more motivation to try harder. Psychologists call this “over compensation”, which simply means “extra trying” or trying harder to overcome difficulties (Kopmeyer, 2006:10).

Life in general for everyone is not always the same. It isn’t a bed of roses. The path is never smooth to travel.

Some are born to be tall in terms of wealth, power, intellect and talent. And this, in a Buddhist nation like ours, we reverently catalog them, a Karmic Born mortals. Nonetheless, the opposites for the above as well, are also equally believed to be the result of true application of the Law of cause and effect.

The cactus is popular for its talent to grow in deserts. The ornamental rose that robes the eye of every passerby when on its full bloom, would collect as many spittle of hatred as cactus, if planted in deserts. Such like it, the camel which is a widespread desert ship to transfer heavyweights, mayn’t be on the menu of choice for Layaps in Bhutan even for running the same errand.

This is a fate in the museum of our life. We are almost like a newly appointed curator. At our disposal, we know the museum stands, but can’t define the artefacts lying within. The young, energetic and passionate trainees get trained and later made to grow in a strange place. At such places, their high life goal seldom gets defeated owing to the low beginning.

I was a secondary Physics teacher, later got displaced in a community primary school, which survived with multi-grade teaching that was all Greek to me is a case in point. The very instantly, the pulmonary vein of my passion in crafting productive citizens got deoxygenated. The so called Assistant Education Officer, making remarks of me being wastage if placed together with my wife who was having the same teaching subject further caused impurity. I pitched up a very slow and tough growth under such sterile land of leaders in education.

Later I was fished out from the minute pond of a community school to the Sea of Lower Secondary School. On my arrival there, I could make a comfortable swim in my teaching pool because I got a little space to paddle with some science subjects. But seeing and working under a leader who was not better than a tyrant was terribly making my life begin again with an absolute low beginning.  

Back in college, I remember how I managed to spread a distinct colour of an academic root that later yielded the much coveted “F.L. Goropze Prize for Academic Proficiency in B.Ed Secondary Science. I was also a recipient of a merit certificate for the “Institute Prize for Valuable Contribution” in recognition of assuming a voluntary lead in literary functions and periodicals, which was the first of its kind in the history of the college. But ironically, these credentials, which only later I learnt, instead, has formed conjunctivitis in the eyes of their ego.

I took any kind of responsibility being instructed and sculpted beautifully though not like Michelangelo who captured global attention. I partook in school’s every endeavour to tune the strings and helped produce music though not like Beethoven who mesmerized the globe. I had an equal share in writing the name of my school pointing at higher levels though not like William Shakespeare with whose poetry spellbound both the hemispheres.

I quit the school to another before the roots of my passion got wilted and turned flaccid. The following year, I made my name to the final list of awardees for the scholarships aboard. I lost the control to console myself when, on many occasions threatened for asking leave, to attend the selection interview back then. On hearing that I made up in the shortlist frame, people would suffocate and wobble. I failed in three attempts successively. In 2009, 2010 and 2011.

But I always managed to water the virtually drooping tubers of my hope and determination after consoling with the stories of Mao Tsetung, William Harvey, Charles Darwin and Wright Brothers, that are worth sharing.

Mao Tsetung, after graduating from the first Provincial Normal School in Changsha in 1918, went to Peking University to work as a Librarian’s assistant. Later during the time of his promotion, he was considered unfit for that petty job. But, legend has it now that, Mao Tsetung left an imprint on the history of China.

When Harvey first put forward his theory of blood circulation, dead cats, rotten fruits and pieces of wine jugs were hurled at him.

When Charles Darwin put forward his theory of Evolution, meetings were held in many places condemning him.

When Wright Brothers gave their demonstration of a flying machine at Kitty Hawk in 1903, only five turned up. (Pai, Anant. 2007:31).

For all of the heroes, they had a low beginning. Sometimes, it is worth consoling with such adventurous and heroic deeds.

 “It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense”-Robert Green Ingersoll