And then it happened, for the first time in my life I fell in love …..

Before I start writing, for all those well-wishers of my wife who are waiting to send this to her, a small piece of information — my wife was the first person to know this, and that too more than twelve years back. So, might be better off not wasting your time on that.

They say your first experience of love is so powerful that you never forget it your whole life. They say it is because it happens when our hearts are still innocent and pure. Whatever it is, and whoever has come into my life after that, my first love has been special, like a dream.

Talking about dreams I have always been a dreamer, and someone who loved all the attention in life. So, this happened during my college days, during one of our college arts festivals, when I happened to see this person for the first time. I am not sure if I want to call it love or admiration, but there definitely was something that made me long for more meetings. They say the first time that you fall in love you become oblivious of everything and everyone else around you. I could see this happen right in front of me, there were my friends who were dear to me, there was my engineering education which could decide my future, etc., but nothing mattered anymore.

And the funny thing is we were both so different in all respects — financially, academically, success-wise, age-wise, etc. I was so damn sure that if I walk to my parents and told them about this they would never let me continue with it. I was so scared to even talk to my dearest friends about this for fear of they possibly dissuading me from it. Our meetings, hence, were of a very clandestine nature. Since I am talking about a time when emails were still not very common and chats/WhatsApps were non-existent it made things even more difficult. But, as they say the more difficult it became to meet the more merrier were the times that we spent together.

I had read a lot about how a break-up affects your life forward. For the same reason, I used to keep telling myself about how different we were and that it might not be in the best of my interest to continue this any further. Finally, after a long thought I had to make that decision, of breaking up. Yes, you heard it right, it was I who made that bold decision, because I believed I was striving for something which was beyond me. Next couple of years was really tough on me. Not sure how many of you have experienced this scenario, when you have just broken up with your first ever love and you need to avoid that person tooth and nail.

Then the time came for me to move to the land of opportunities. I was confused on how I should be going about with my career plans. I knew very well as to who was the best person to reach out to for help, someone who has been there and successfully tread that path prior to me. But to reach out to someone who you broke up with, without even giving a proper reason was so not manly, I thought. I decided against it and moved on my own, and relocated to the United States of America.

I realized fast that higher studies in US is very different from doing Bachelors in Engineering in India. You are on your own and completely in charge. You need to plan and run your studies as if you are running an enterprise of your own. It was getting really tough, and I was having second thoughts on whether I had made the right decision. Finally, I had no option but to reach out to, you know who. And am thankful to myself that I decided to go ahead and do that. From then on, I haven’t kept myself back from reaching out to a good friend, who happened to be my first love, for anything and everything.

Since then everything has been great for me and I haven’t had a need to look back. I realized that you need to be really lucky enough to have your first love as a great friend all throughout your life. Nowadays we meet more often and share lot of interesting stuff with each other. Pardon me if I sound a bit arrogant, but, today I have caught up with all those shortcomings I once had compared to my friend. Of course, the information I would love to keep a secret is that it took me only 20 years to catch up. When I first met my love 20 years back he was an entrepreneur, who was running a startup of his own with three of his collegemates, was happily married to my present-day wife and both my present-day sons called him dad.

The first step in your success journey is to understand yourself better. Am sure just like what I experienced each one of you will initially see only the good things, those that will make you fall in love with yourself. But, as always, your journey forward will slowly start revealing the shortcomings in you. This is where the strength of your “self-love” will let you overcome your shortcomings. If you have realized the goodness in you via self-love, you would obviously work hard to overcome your shortcomings so that you and the world around you start loving you more. Start envisioning the smarter, more successful and more lovable you of the future, one who anyone would fall in love like crazy. Start loving that person; the crazier your love is, the greater heights you will reach in your journey forward.

Now, please don’t tell my wife this, I have a new love now. Old habits die hard, you guessed it right, I am again in love with this person 20 years older to me, one who drives a Lamborghini, flies his personal Jet, plays Golf when he is free (which by the way is any day that he wants), vacations in Hawaii, still happily married to my present-day wife and has two very successful sons who love what they do and more important, who love their parents like crazy!

This article was also posted on Medium.