Thoughts: Hannah's Blog

Recently I attended a training session about “Coaching”. As a part of an exercise, they paired two of us together and one was supposed to be the Listener, while other the Speaker. The Speaker was supposed to choose a topic, about some defining moment in their life and speak about it for 5 minutes.

This is what I spoke about: My defining moment at Delhi. Before we dive into the specifics of the incident in itself, I’d like to set some context and the timeline. I

t happened right after my graduation, so I must have been around 20 years old. If you don’t know much about me, I used to be (and still am) the shy girl, scared of going to new places. I had a small circle around myself and I couldn’t look beyond that.

I had always thought that I would stay in the same state that I was born in. Never thought I’d move out of it for any reason. (I ended up moving out for my internship as part of my post graduate course) So when the interview location was announced as Delhi (for a bank, I had cleared the written exam) I laughed to myself reading the mail and told my mom, we are not going. (I was from the Southern part of India and had never journeyed outside of my state at that point, Delhi was in North India 2500 kms away)

My mom had been speaking about it to our neighbours, about the lost opportunity, when they mentioned that they knew of someone who was going to Delhi, it turned out to be some other neighbours of ours. It so happened to be on the same week as that of my interview. Coincidence? We took that as a “sign” that I might actually land that job after all and we booked the train tickets and set off to Delhi along with our neighbours!

An aunt of mine was supposed to receive us there and take us to her house in Ludhiana via another train. The connection train was to leave in half an hour after our arrival. It so happened that when we got down, few other trains had also unloaded hordes of people. Looked like it was some migration time and all of them were either leaving or arriving. I’ve never seen so much crowd in my entire life.

We started our ascent from one platform to another. A big mass of human bodies so close together. Somehow, My aunt was 5 stairs above, my mom, three to four stairs below me. It was a jam. There was no order to those climbing up and those climbing down, it was just a mass movement, utter chaos.

I witnessed a lady sitting in a corner of a stair and people just climbing around her and past her or above her, not even helping her up. It was like a near stampede situation out there and I thought to myself if I go down, that’s it. I won’t be able to get back up. (I’m tiny as is, I was tinier back then)

Right after that thought, my feet slipped and I started going down among the throng. My mom noticed and started shouting, and people all around me, stopped moving and somehow cleared some space around me and my aunt was (miraculously) able to reach me and pull me up.

And that was a defining moment for me because it was at that moment I felt, if I am alive it is only by the grace of God and that the reason why He probably saved me was because He has some purpose for my life. My time on earth was not over yet. It gave me a strong sense of purpose over the next few days and months as I pondered my existence and the wonder of it.

Even now decades later, I still have that strong conviction of purpose and I strive to live my life with that in mind, though I struggle with doubts from time to time, I’m constantly reminded that there is a purpose for me being here.

For those curious about the outcome of the interview, I flunked! Didn’t get through. I initially had a strong conviction that I would get it and was disappointed for days later. But in the end I realised I had gained something much more valuable than a job.

Do you have any such defining moments in life? Care to share?