You stand there with your un-athletic stance. Anxiously waiting with your sneakers untied and social pressure to be the one chosen. Player after player and you're still not getting picked. It is the first dodgeball game of the season in preschool and the two team captains seem to be picking every other person imaginable, even stinky Stevie, over you. You finally get put onto the unlucky captain's team who rolls his eyes knowing what he's in for. It is in this moment that you understand the pain and frustration of rejection.
Call it a cliche, but the never-ending dodgeball-team-choosing example is the most prime example of the feeling of being rejected. Throughout our entire lives, we undergo a series of expected and unexpected rejections that change the course of our lives and prompt us to question our sanity.
Rejected from your top school, the love of your life, a job, an audition, a contest, a loan, the list simply never ends. The art of a rejection is a true phenomenon. Yes, the art. Because being rejection has turned from a societal abnormality to an expected mode of life. There is not a single person on this entire planet who has never experienced some form of rejection. And each person to get rejected from whatever it may be, feels the exact same way: why?
Rejection is the harshest part of our world. It inflicts mental, emotional, and physical pain amongst the people experiencing it. Being rejected makes you put your life in perspective. You begin to demoralize your mental health by contemplating a plethora of self-loathing reasons as to why you weren't "good enough" to get what you want. It is so, so sad to be rejected. You will never understand why, and sometimes it isn't personal. Being rejected from a job opportunity by an employer you don't know is not personal. But your mind prompts you to believe it is and you sit, wallowing in your sorrow, questioning why you didn't try harder in your sixth-grade math class to put you in advanced math with the rest of your friends. You go through the domino effects of your life and wonder where you went wrong and how you could have gone right.
As life goes on, which it does might I remind you, rejection is God's incredible way of opening a window. Not making Varsity field hockey your sophomore year of high school like the rest of your friends meant that you made a good enough impression on your JV coach who just so happened to have connections to the Varsity lacrosse coach. Not getting into your top choice school meant you had the best four years of your life at a different one. Being told you weren't good enough to date meant you found the love of your life after.
The point is, be the last person picked for dodgeball. That way, when it's your turn you'll prove everyone wrong and reject your rejection.
