Everyone loves an underdog story. The grinding-to-make-it phase is the best part. Success comes secondary to the memory of the struggle.
There is beauty in the struggle.
I grew up with my mother selling small goods (cigarettes, sweets, and biscuits) on the front veranda of our family house to provide for me and my siblings.
Mr. Lex, a neighbour, would come every morning without fail to buy a pack of cigarettes. That used to be enough for my lunch and bus fare to school. I guess he was struggling to quit the habit. And for someone who never wanted me to smoke (he told me that repeatedly), there was a kind of beauty in his struggle. His bad habit helped keep us going.
You weren’t supposed to be here
Many would say to me: “You weren’t supposed to be here.” And honestly, they might be right.
I was the fourth child of my mom and dad. The story goes that from the time of my conception until I was born, almost nine months, my dad was unemployed. He only got a job as a janitor at the local radio station on the very same day I was born.
Maybe that’s just good luck. Or maybe it’s proof that struggling through the hard times gets you rewarded.
I was told it was a struggle for my mom to feed herself and the rest of the family during the pregnancy. I can only imagine the hungry days and nights. The phrase “eating salt from a wooden spoon” might have been real. Salt might have been the only thing cheap enough to keep the hunger at bay.
The cost of raising me
I was a child who tested my mother’s patience at times. But after all the struggle to raise me and get me to adulthood, the reward was that I was equipped to go out into the world.
I probably went a bit overboard when I told my mom, at 19, that I would be leaving to move to a foreign country I had never visited, to live with strangers I had only met online, and to start from the bottom as an immigrant and international student.
The underdog keeps going
The beauty of the underdog story is that they keep failing but keep trying. The beauty in the struggle is that it’s the hard times you remember most. The grinding-to-make-it phase is the best part. Success comes secondary to the memory of the struggle.
“The hard times you remember most. The grinding-to-make-it phase is the best part.”
Mrs. Dorothy. You are a true inspiration, an underdog who made it through countless sacrifices for something you held dear to your heart. I might not know all of your struggles, but the beauty of it is that your legacy will live on.
I promise.
