It all happened very quickly. It was 7am, in a cold morning at Prague, when I received a phone call from home. The tone was tense, and it didnāt help that the line was unstable. Even though the conversation took place for 2 minutes, I could only remember vividly that one line : āYour dad has collapsed. Heās passed awayā.
Iāve shared this experience numerous times with people I meet, simply because I was amazed at how such a loss, which almost pushed me to the brink of giving up, had instead given me a new lease on life.
The word lose, is unfortunately, one that is tinged with negativity. We grow up with the idea that losing something leads to a huge deficit in our life. Because when it happens, it takes us off guard. And thatās when we will need to make a choice. We can either feel sorry for ourselves by being overwhelmed by the ensuing emotions, or gather the courage to push ourselves out of the negativity that surrounds us.
My dadās passing away couldnāt have come at a worse time. I was in the midst of my AIESEC exchange program in Czech Republic, and just a week away from submitting my application for the Local Committee President of AIESEC in UTP, when all of this happened. It crushed my confidence, laid my dreams in tatters, because I knew I had lost the biggest pillar of my life.
