Mulligans

In the game of golf an informal player is often granted a second chance to improve the shot, it’s called a mulligan. Sometimes life gives us the same chance, to take another shot at things, which it has offered before, perhaps to improve or achieve what we haven’t been able to in the past. But I couldn’t help wondering, if what we wanted in the past, wasn’t really what we needed in the first place? I know the sentence makes but a little sense. My whole life has been a story of second and third chances, not that I could’ve not achieve it, if I really intended, but I was ambivalent about things and it took me time to make up my mind and by the time I’d done that, the train had left the station, but no regrets. A boy’s dream is always to see his father proud and approve of him, so has been mine. I always felt that; I was being compared to this or that cousin of mine in the family. My father had a dream, to see me as a doctor one day, clichéd I know, quite contrary to any field what I’d have chosen for myself, I perused his dream anyway, but somewhere along the line I lost all mine, of course I never became a doctor, but somewhere down this path of abstinence, I found myself. As the time passed, so did his constant mentions of my cousin joining the med line and becoming a doctor, it got me wondering perhaps he’d have been his son instead of me. During the course of time, however, this whole second chance thing got me thinking that even if I were given a chance to become a doctor, I wouldn’t! because it is not my calling. But few days back when my father introduced me to his friends and the pride he felt in introducing me for being merely his son got me thinking perhaps one doesn’t need second chances to get the approval of their loved ones. Rather it’s following your own heart and coming to yourself that matters the most. I cannot speak for you all, but it certainly has for me.