So this template of decision-making held me (and us) in good stead.

And one day my dad called to say Dadu (my grandfather) wasn’t so well. I know how it sounds in retrospect, but that’s the thing.

My Dadu wasn’t someone who was ever sick. I worried more about my parents’ health than his, he was always fine. Sure, age slowed him down. He went out less. He did not speak on the phone for too long now. But for Christ’s sake, the man did headstands until 3 years ago. He was the smartest most brilliant human any of us had ever seen. The guy who did math problems to pass his time. He has been calling himself a senior citizen from the age of 50. But he was never really sick. He gave everyone health remedies, he was the shining example of how investing in your health had really high returns. He did all his own banking. He never ate anything that was bad for him, did not know the taste of alcohol and had never smoked a cigarette in his life. Not only was he extremely fit, he was smart enough to know all the right things to do to stay that way.

But he had a fall and needed help now. He needed help sitting down and standing up. So my parents did everything in lockstep. Got him a walker, hired a helper and my dad considered finally retiring to be with his father more.

The doctors said he was great. Great for his age, just needed to transition to more assisted living. Okay, easy, understandable. He was 88 years old. It made sense.

My dad called me one day to say Dadu was in the hospital. And like I said, I plan everything. I had a big campaign launch, so I decided to fly home right after it was over, or maybe over Easter break.

Everyday I asked my dad if I needed to come home and everyday he said the doctors have said there is no threat to life.

Everyday.

And one day my dad called to catch-up about his day on his way from the house to the hospital.

A little while later my mom called.

‘He’s gone’

I asked her where?

“ No you don‘t understand, Dadu’s gone.”

I did not believe her. I needed to hear this from my dad. It made absolutely no sense. No sense at all. And then I heard him sob.

Unconsolably and uncontrollably like a little child. He said “Sheru meri toh mummy bhi nai hai or papa bhi nai hai.” Translation- I already did not have a mother and now I have no father. I will never forget those words in his voice and the helplessness in them.

All I could hold in me was disbelief. Like they are all lying and it is some cruel joke that is playing out in front of me. Maybe they just want me to come home and they think this will do it?

Raj (the boyfriend/husband) came to hug me and I remember just asking him to back off. All I could do to gain control of the situation was slap myself. Again and again just slap myself.

For not having the brains to go home earlier. For ignoring the reality that had been hiding in plain sight.

I remembered my mom saying “Well if you feel like coming home, maybe you should.”

She was the one who spent the most time with him, who saw him getting confused. Who saw him slowly lose parts of himself that we all took for granted.

Raj packed my bag, he booked my tickets and he sent his family to help mine compose themselves.

The flight I was booked on, had a technical glitch. And the other passengers were starting a bit of a revolt. And me- who gets unphased by the tiniest inconvenience sat there just howling away to glory at my own helplessness.

Not reaching home in time, meant they would likely have to do the funeral without me. MY OWN DADU. Who I had complete freedom and ability to text 2 days ago would be gone without so much as a glance at him.

My dad called to ask if they should wait another day or have the funeral without me. I weighed the options.

My Dadu would not have been the one to wait for anyone. He was the most practical person one could know, free of the emotional nothings that my father and I seem manufactured to carry. So his death felt like it should be on his terms.

But I knew, that my father, my mother and my uncle needed me to get through it.

I knew that my mother would not be able to attend the funeral and she would need someone to reassure her that it was okay.

I knew that my father and my uncle had witnessed their mother’s funeral at the ages of 15 and 17, lost their youngest brother to suicide at the ages of 45 and 43 and so this one would be their third collective funeral and they needed a buffer and a third witness to walk them through it.

And I knew that I needed to see him.

So I said “I promise Papa, I am coming please just wait.”

Not knowing whether I was doing wrong by my own grandfather who would have wanted a different resolution.

And in that moment, I had a heartbreaking realisation. What if I lived here in this foreign faraway land for the next few years of my life. And got this kind of a call about one of my parents. And I had to decide whether their funerals would happen without me.

My parents have lived much more stressful and unhealthy lives compared to Dadu. They lack his discipline and his commitment to his health. They built their lives around their elders and their child, supporting two generations often at the cost of themselves.

My father was a textbook good kid. Losing his mother at the age of 15 really shaped how he saw his role as a son.

He attended to his father everyday. He looked out for his father, no matter how busy he was, how inconvenient it felt, or what other aspects of his life demanded. And my mother, spent the bulk of her life caring for a man who was not even her own father.

These two together built a fortress around my Dadu and I and in a way parented us both.

My father took his father to every single doctor’s appointment, paid for his every expense, ran any errand that his father needed every single day.

My mother could sense what Dadu wanted on a particular day, what he was sulking about, when he ate less than the previous day.

And then there is me. I see my parents once a year, twice if we have a family crisis, speak to them once a week and struggle to make my own ends meet. I am less rewarding as a child to my parents, than they were to Dadu. Surely my parents feel cheated.

They doled out their love and care to both generations but don’t receive someone to help them in the everyday challenges of ageing. With each trip home, I see them change a bit more.

They can’t be as spontaneous as they were, their blood sugar needs more monitoring, they see doctors as a matter of routine. They are slowly but surely ageing and if my miraculous wonder Dadu could disappear like he did with no proper notice, without a phase of assisted living, how much time do I have to plan and deliver the life and care that my parents deserve?

Is it because the world is bigger, is it because our generation is inherently selfish? And what are my realistic options as a person with a mediocre job in advertising. If I move home, would I be an asset to them or more of a liability?

We always said we would move back home at the right time. Plan it, save for it and ensure that we landed into a life guarded with the right jobs back home but what if that, in this day and age is a pipe dream. A lie we tell ourselves to get through the day and make sense of our choices.

I love my parents a lot. Not in a they are my parents so I need to kind of way. I really love them a lot in a way that being away from them pains me, not being there for them is hard, we share our lives, understand each other and are close in a way that I am so very lucky to have.

They are also the ones who mortgaged their house and borrowed a lot of money to give me these opportunities. So giving up these opportunities and moving back home also comes at a cost that seems disparaging to them and the sacrifices that they made

So it is not a simple them or me. It is a more complex version of what do I owe them, what do I owe to Raj and myself, and what do the financial demands of the time we are in demand of me.

I am a less devoted child, but a more educated employee, I share with my parents a lot more than they ever could with their parents, I try to break generational patterns of girls neglecting their parents by making sure I show up for them in a way that Brown culture often treats as taboo.

But I can never be there for them in real time.

And I always thought I had time to build my life in a way that acommodates and honors them.

I also thought I’d have enough money and the world would bend to my ideals and principles but it seems more unforgiving and demanding than the wonderful world my parents had built for me.

And in this chaos and the unanswered questions any choice I make seems to come with its own bills and tradeoffs.

1. Collecting things that look like other things: I have hairclips that look like safety pins, a dish scrub that looks like bread, a hairclip that looks like sunglasses, a lighter that looks like a giant matchstick and a pen stand that looks like a McDonald’s paper bag. Every single one of these things add joy to my life and make me feel just a little more joyful. (I have attached some pictures from the internet for reference).

   

   

   

   

   

2. Planning elaborate birthday presents: I think a lot of why adulthood gets sad and lonely is because we stop doing festive things like throwing surprise parties for our friends, giving each other fun presents rather than gift vouchers and showing up for happy moments. I do understand that all our lives get complicated in different ways and showing up becomes more difficult. Gifts need to be shipped internationally, we don’t know each other’s day to day as well as we did when we were younger and we learn to show up for the difficult parts when our friends truly need us. This is not a critique of adult versions of us, but more of a hack to sneak in some joy for ourselves and our loved ones if and when we can.

3. Watching comedy: I love watching all kinds of comedy- the acclaimed stuff along with the pedestrian show with just a group of people reacting to memes. I make no intellectual assessments on either and just enjoy them for what they are.

4. Buying a bubble gun and blowing bubbles on a random Tuesday: I love blowing bubbles in my balcony and my partner loves doing it for me. Some afternoons, we step out in our balcony and just blow bubbles. When we lived on the first floor, the dogs in our building would chase after these bubbles and it was the best stressbuster for us both.

5. Learning random viral choreographies and doing them badly: I realised that I don’t have to be a great dancer to enjoy it. I actually really love to dance and learn viral choreographies on the internet for no gain. So I do it and it makes me really happy, plus it is a lot less monotonous than other workouts.

6. Window shopping: At some point in my life, I found myself gravitating towards fashion. And buying lots of clothes. While putting outfits together is super fun, shopping to feel better can get expensive really quickly. Mindless shopping can also lead to overconsumption and clutter, so sometimes if I know in my heart that I don’t need anything, I just window shop and come back home a happy camper.

7. Going out of my way to play sports: I have successfully dodged sports all my life. In my 20s, I started playing so my partner would have someone to play with. I actually find that it does give me a little bit of fun and joy, if I can let go of the feeling of embarrassment and just focus on the task in front of me. I think sports are a great way to learn to compartmentalise, focus and sometimes have a laugh.

8. Skipping a chore every now and then: Adult schedules and chores can be a primary source of stress in a lot of people’s lives. In trying to keep up with our chores, I think sometimes we fail to realise that successful chores can mean our patience starts to shrink and irritability increases. Sometimes, I choose a happier evening or weekend for myself by letting a chore go by

9. Having meaningless and frivolous conversations with my friends often and deliberately: I believe that frivolous conversations are vastly underrated. The ones where you are talking about what kind of flowers you like, or narrating a hilarious scene for a movie. These conversations don’t educate you, they don’t offload your struggles, but they do spark joy!

10. Dropping this list when life is in a particularly stressful phase: When finding joy feels like another exhausting chore, I try shifting my focus to getting everything done, only to return to building in joyful practices when they seem more achievable.

I will never forget the day I learnt what anxiety actually felt like.

I was living in student housing, trying to take open a pressure cooker which seemed unusually tight.

I was in a new country where I did not know anyone, I was struggling to find a part-time job as a retail assistant despite work experience in my home country and constantly felt the weight of the sacrifices that my family had made to afford this opportunity to me.

Before this

I had never lived alone.

I had never swept a floor.

Never struggled for money.

And never felt so completely and utterly alone. Until then.

And something about struggling with that pressure cooker just undid me and opened the floodgates to all the other worries I had been carrying in my chest for those few months.

She never left me since.

Every time something felt too overwhelming or difficult, she showed up.

The time I bought a shirt for a job interview and burnt a giant hole in it right before the big interview.

The time I landed a part-time job and then lost it because I refused to work under unlawful conditions.

The time I finally landed a part time job only to find out that I wasn’t very good at it and they had a big inspection.

My legs would be the first to start shaking, usually my warning sign. This would be followed by the palms of my hands starting to feel numb and ultimately chest pains if the issue became too big.

Over a period of time, a lot of issues that gave me the initial anxiety were resolved.

I learnt to exist in this new country without the people I loved, met some new people, learnt to exist in that part time job, did well in uni, found other jobs more up my alley, secured my financial wellbeing and stopped being as weighed down by the minor inconveniences of the everyday.

But the anxiety, she stayed.

In my initial years, when I couldn’t name and process these feelings, I would be mad at myself and try to discipline myself harder and harder. If I could be better, more resilient, more prepared, it would not happen.

Unfortunately for me, the discipline did not do the trick.

Until someone told me- maybe try being nicer to your anxious alter ego. Show her some love. My younger self thought this was really bad advice. She was the problem, how could I be nice to her? The one who made me snap irrationally, drained me and brought out the sides of me that I detested.

But having nothing to lose, I tried it. That wise person also told me that the reason my anxiety showed up was to protect me from situations that seemed too overwhelming. And so, if I could reassure her that I had everything under control- that I would make sure nothing bad would happen and we would both be okay, that she would stop taking me by surprise.

So I started to comfort her more. I promised her I had us covered, that I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her or to me and she started to relax. She got less manic, made me want to scream and cry less and slowly just became a part of me that let me know when something was uncomfortable in a language that we had managed to create.

I have learnt to accept her as a part of me and allow her to exist with a softened dignity. I learnt not to scrutinize myself as viciously.

I saw her more clearly- a response to fear, rather than the abandonment of my good self, which was better behaved and happier. I also recognise the contributions that the anxiety has made to my life.

For my first year of working in media, she made sure I checked every piece of work, thrice. She prevented me from making mistakes, when I felt like I could not afford to. She ensured that everything in my life functioned as it needed to. She made me vigilant and protective of myself.

More than anything, she showed me that something in me needed more compassion and love.

She still shows up from time to time. And over the years. I have developed some rituals to coexist with her more gently.

• I try and sit down in a familiar and comfortable spot.

• I wait for the feeling to pass rather than punishing myself for it.

• I try and accrue skills that will solve the problems that are overwhelming me when she is away.

• I show her love and comfort and allow myself to drop a chore or two if it is going to mean a more peaceful evening for my parter and I.

• I try and fill my time with people who make me feel joyful and enable me to show up better.

• I say no to certain commitments that I know I would not be able to do justice to rather than taking on more and more strain.

• I schedule light games like pickleball and badminton that give me a task to focus on and give my mind a break.

But now, instead of treating her like an enemy, I treat her like a worried relative who loves me a little too intensely.

I listen to her.

I comfort her.

And I silently rejoice when she leaves.

Modern social media discourse has divided girls into “girl’s girls’ and ‘pick mes’. And I know that the foundation of this distinction is meant to be girls who support other girls vs girls who don’t. Which makes total and complete sense. However, I think both of the identities have been simplified and reduced to girls who embrace feminine interests and girls who don’t.

The instagram version of the girl’s girl seems to revels in her femininity, takes pride in dressing well, doing her makeup well and embraces girly interests- the problem is that 15 years ago girly interests seemed to come with the prerequisite of beauty. Which some of us did not feel we could just have.

And what I think is largely misunderstood now is how girls who did not feel pretty made sense of their identity.

It was better to look bad on purpose, better to say we did not care how we looked and build ourselves outside our femininity.

At that age, we are sold a fantasy. A fantasy of being in love with the perfect boy. A lot of us talked about it and fantasised about what it would look like. But from the male gaze, some girls were not potential love interests, they were the confidante for both the boys that liked the pretty girls and the pretty girls. Don’t get me wrong- this is not to say that we fancied the boys in our lives. What I mean is that we never believed that when the right guy finally shows up, the one that we are interested in, that he could yearn for us the way that we see the boys we know yearned for the pretty girls around us. I also think it is forgotten that we had subservient personalities to everyone- the girls just as much as the boys. Girls who felt this way, did not reject the pretty girls; they rejected the traits that are now widely considered an essential component of girlhood.

The confidante had to be the funny girl, the friendly girl or the cool girl because being girly and demanding was off limits to her. Not to say that pretty girls could not be funny or friendly- of course we know they can and could and being a pretty girl comes with its own challenges. It is also true that at that time male traits were considered superior and the world was more openly sexist. So, the girly girl was called vain because she dressed up or treated like she was silly because her beauty was all people could see. She had to endure the boyfriend’s overbearing best friend or sister without the social acceptance of her discomfort. The world was mean and unfair to her too. And the instagram version of a girl’s girl has risen as a response to this. But this essay is not about that.

My central thesis as a young not-so-pretty girl, is that the girls who rejected femininity did not do it because they wanted male validation. They did it because they occupied the identity that seemed accessible.

I remember a girl asking another girl why I looked like a housemaid. I also remember a beautifully heartbreaking moment of my girls defending me with ‘Don’t say that, she is a good person!’

I remember when a teenage boy asked to date me and I asked him “Why would you want that, you could date a real girl?” I remember dressing up in the worst ways that I could so that he could realise that he was too good for me and leave me before I got deeply involved. I remember planning my life around friends, dogs and family knowing in my heart that romantic love was a luxury that I could never afford because its currency was beauty.

I remember every movie and tv show showing that the way that a boy fell in love with a girl was by being mesmerized by her looks and then declaring his love for her with a strange passion- often knowing very little about who she was.

In adulthood, the currency shifts from beauty to household aesthetics. How much you enjoy cooking, keeping house and decorating your space. And yes, these are basic life skills but like everything else, some girls gravitate towards them and others don’t.

And so, I was a girl’s girl in the sense that I loved my girls and I felt the need to protect them, in the way that I always chose my friends over a boyfriend and never wanted to ridicule another girl. I loved them with all my heart. However, I was not a girly girl for most of my life.

My mother, on the other hand, was a girly girl. She loved dressing up, looking after herself and showing up looking presentable. She simply could not understand why her daughter insisted on poor self-care and showing up as what might have seemed like the ugliest version of herself. For her, beauty was freeing, because she had it.

For me, this neglect of my appearance felt freeing. I always rebelled against her expectations with, “But I do well in school, all the parents keep saying how good my grades are, I am never rude to anyone, I try so hard to be good” And I always wondered why it could never be enough not to be a pretty girl?

I think my mother felt rejected too in the same way that I did. She felt like my position made her seem inferior because I could not appreciate the things that she valued and had built her identity around.

As the years passed, we all negotiated differently. She learnt to see my strengths and I learnt to see hers. I also realized that while ‘looking bad on purpose’ helps my mind feel better, it does not help me show up better and could keep me out of spaces that were beneficial to me. I also gained confidence in my appearance and found a love for fashion!

And I think with us, the rest of society grew too. However, it continues to divide girls and stack their positions against each other. Is it wrong to treat your girls badly for male validation? Absolutely. But does not embodying the right amount of girliness exile you from belonging? The rejection of femininity was like an unpopular kid saying they don’t like parties. And I think every girl, like my mother and I finds herself trapped negotiating some strange binary of either being too girly or not girly enough. But perhaps girlhood has enough room to hold all of us. The ones who love home décor and the ones who don’t.

Then came the social media feeds with the curated themes, the corporate emails that tried to sound smarter than they were, and the makeup and filters that made us feel worthy of putting our faces out in the world.

Authenticity in the face of these rules was an unassuming rebellion. Stepping out in track pants and low effort hoop earrings. Responding with ‘not great today’ when someone asks how you are doing instead of the “I’m well, how are you?”- a breath of fresh air.

Speaking your truth became the freeing template of the next generation, but somehow it did not succeed in alleviating all our stressors. The authenticity gave us a taste of freedom, but created some new challenges of its own.

I have always been a big sharer, it feels like my default setting- mostly because I never felt protective of my realities and never really understood the point of keeping most of my life private. And the stuff I was sharing was not always the deeper truths of life, sometimes just a silly purchase, a new outfit or just a fun activity that I was a part of.

I often do it just to stay in touch with the people I love- the sharing of updates feels integral to the bond somehow. So we can preserve the closeness we have and continue to rely on each other.

An ice-breaker.

A bid for connection

And sometimes an SOS.

We have always been told that sharing is good- and so we broadcast our wins, losses, diets and call our best friends our human diary.

And I am not here to argue that we should share less. I believe that sharing is indeed inherently better than not sharing- I would much rather have people tell me about the mundane details of their day, the things they like, all the silly little details that make them wonderful and weird in their own specific way. It is an indulgence that I frequently enjoy- a minor inconvenience in my life and I call in the troops.

I am here to argue that nobody is prepared for the aftermath of radical sharing- if sharing is always good, then does it logically follow that we must always unfailingly be our most empathetic selves who can receive the sharing and respond with the right amount of care.

We don’t know how to respond to each other’s authenticity when our realities don’t align, nervous systems feel triggered by each other and life gets in the way.

While everyone was learning to share, nobody learnt to be on the other side of the radical sharing. We were never taught where relating ends and hijacking begins- and so we all have different ideas of it. For instance, I experienced this a lot when I lost a grandparent- Almost everyone I met narrated their own experiences of losing a loved one. The intention of course is to make you feel less alone, which worked too. I did understand that this is a common life experience and I did benefit from their wisdom. Nobody opens up to hurt you, they do it to be with you and also because most people are really awkward around grief and loss- and no templated response seems good enough. However, as they relayed their experiences, I also felt the onus to put my own grief aside and comfort them to the full extent of my abilities.

Because of course their loss is as profound and important, so neither them nor I was fully prepared to participate in this exchange meaningfully.

I thought back to all the times I related to someone else’s experience to comfort them and whether they must have felt pressured to engage too. If I am being honest, I still find myself relating to empathise often- and two seconds later apologising and shifting focus back to the original sharer. But I don’t have the tools to skip it altogether and participate without a frame of reference.

And from what I can tell, as the world gets bigger and bigger, a lot of sharing is also done in bite sized texts, voice notes, short weekend brunches and phone calls across the world in formats that connect us but do not allow for the articulation of every nuance and context that the information is set in. So, while we may know snippets of each other’s lives, we are unable to share everything outside the highlight reel, making it hard to truly understand each other.

Life also hits us all in different ways at different times, which are not always conducive to understanding each other. And as time and our versions of events evolve, both participants are holding different parts of the puzzle, with the nicest of intentions- but carrying feelings of being misunderstood or resentful.

My radical idea here is not about how authentic one should be, or why we must not overshare- it is how listening and holding information is as important as sharing itself.

This could mean understanding why someone might think a silly update is important to someone, or what weighs particularly heavy on them, going into conversations with the intent of pure listening, discerning the challenges of the seasons of lives our loved ones are in, the emotional capacities that each of you hold and most importantly managing the disappointment that comes when you share something and it does not receive the audience you were hoping for.

I am of course still figuring out the rules of the game, but I think the answers to authenticity are not less sharing, or more honesty- they are learning to receive other people’s honesty without betraying ourselves.

I was one of those students.

I ranked first in my class from grades six through twelve. It was a small classroom in a tiny bubble of a school, but it still shaped how I saw myself, achievement and life itself.

And while I had classmates who were exceptional in specific areas- someone brilliant at Biology, someone else naturally gifted with computers- school rewarded me for breadth. For being good at many things, even if I was not extraordinary at any one thing.

It is also why many of the people I know who experienced early academic success, myself included, seemed strangely unprepared for life outside school.

Not because we were unintelligent.
But because school rewarded a very specific set of behaviours that do not always transfer neatly into adulthood.

1. School rewards generalists. Life rewards specialists.

School systems are designed to reward all-rounders- students who can maintain high performance across multiple disciplines simultaneously.

But adulthood eventually asks you to choose.

Most careers require specialisation. Commitment. Repetition. The willingness to choose one path and commit to it.

That is surprisingly difficult for people who spent their formative years being rewarded for breadth.

If you are reasonably good at many things, choosing one path rarely feels exciting. It feels like choosing a part of yourself while missing out on another.

You are not simply selecting a career. You are abandoning several possible versions of yourself.

2. High achievers often develop a fear of being bad at things

The identity of doing well in school, bares many rewards. It earns you praise, builds your confidence but also boxes you in to the idea that if you don’t keep up your success (even if this perceived success is your 8th grade English exam which goes on to be inconsequential in real life), that you will lose everything.

It means, you do not learn how to suck at something long enough to get good at it. You have learnt to hold yourself to a standard that sets you up to fail and so you would prefer to quit things over being bad at them and sitting with that discomfort of being bad at things while you learn to do them, that will ultimately reward you with growth or success.

This fear of failure holds you back from getting good at non academic things- things like sports, hobbies, crafts and takes the fun out of anything that you do not have a natural flair for and will need time to get better at.

3. School creates an expectation of meritorious returns

School teaches you a simple equation:

Effort in → reward out.

Study hard.
Answer correctly.
Receive an A.

The real world does not operate with that level of clarity.

Adult life is shaped by timing, ambiguity, economic volatility and unexplained luck.

This confuses high achievers who are expecting commensurate rewards to follow their efforts.

Why am I not progressing faster?
Why does someone less competent seem more successful?
Why does the promotion always feel close but never arrive?

People who were not conditioned to expect constant institutional validation often take these setbacks less personally. They may have a healthier relationship with effort because they were never promised fairness in the first place.

4. The strange grief of no longer being ‘the smart kid’

I think one of the hardest parts of adulthood for former high achievers is realising that intelligence alone is not a personality, a destiny or a guarantee.

The world eventually stops caring who topped their eighth-grade English class. Their special status has been taken away. And so they have to reinvent yourself without the badge of honour that they earned.

5. The transition from external validation to self-direction is brutal

School gives you constant feedback.

Grades.
Ranks.
Awards.
Deadlines.
Clear instructions.

You always know where you stand.

As you leave academic life, you stop getting marked on every piece of work that you put out.

There is nobody to grade your decisions, validate your choices or give you either the roadmap to success or the motivation to find it yourself. You have to make it up as you go along and find imperfect, suboptimal answers within yourself and keep going on the path of your own choices.

Students who have an intrinsic locus of feedback, never got that pat on the back from the system so they learnt to give it to themselves.

They never had perfect answers in class so they learnt to think on their feet and give the wrong answer sometimes and learn that it won’t kill you, making them more likely to innovate, lead and be the success stories that nobody saw coming.

6. High achievers often oscillate between burnout and avoidance

Many “smart kids” seem to fall into one of two categories.

The first are the students who coasted on natural ability and never fully developed discipline because they did not need to.

The second are the hyper-disciplined achievers who spent their formative years relentlessly optimising every outcome.

Ironically, both models can fail later in life.

The first struggles when life finally demands sustained effort.
The second arrives in adulthood already exhausted.

By their mid-twenties, many high achievers are burnt out before they have even begun building the lives they actually want.

Not because they are weak.
But because they spent years treating every stage of life as preparation for the next.

Always hustling.
Always excelling.
Always chasing the next big thing.

But here is the silver lining. I believe that the things that made them smart in the first place did not lie in the grading system, they resided in them.

Yes, the rules of the game have changed, but the players are still intelligent, capable and driven- the ones who love a good challenge, the ones who are stimulated by learning.

And so while they may take a while to find their footing, it is only a matter of time before their smarts and everything they have learnt find a way in the new world order.