Dear Auntie,

I am a regular reader of your column but I just didn’t think I would be writing to you one day. I am going through the worst phase in my life. I didn’t get admitted to any medical colleges because of my test scores. I was a fairly good student but I don’t know what happened. Maybe I lack determination. Everyone in my family is a doctor and everyone was hoping I would get admission easily. They even started calling me doctor. Now I feel like a failure.

My mother and father wanted me to be a doctor so much that I feel so guilty now as I have let everybody down. We can’t afford private universities.

Although being a doctor was never my dream, it was my mother’s. My mother was disappointed, but she didn’t say anything to me. Auntie, I feel like a complete loser. My family had just one wish and I couldn’t do it. I don’t even know what to do now

Loser

Dear Pick-yourself-up,

Assuming that you are human, you are being unrealistic if you expect that you will get through life without ever failing. Failure happens to everyone and even if it may seem like the end of the world, it is not. If you look around you will see lots of people whom you consider successful who have failed, but have got up again and pushed through to success. So resilience — the ability to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and move on — is the quality you need to work on to lead a truly happy and fulfilled life. So let this failure serve to strengthen your determination about what you want to do. Start the goal setting right now.

To be fair, you should not expect that you will fail and then instantly pick yourself up and carry on as if nothing happened. You invested a lot in your goal to get into medical college and you should give yourself time to recover, but at the same time please don’t mope around all day. Instead use your time to think carefully about your next move and where you want it to take you. You say that becoming a doctor was your mother’s dream and not really your own ... so that is a place to start thinking about your next move which will hopefully be more in alignment with what you want, rather than what everyone else expects you to do.

Whatever you decide, please understand that when we try to be perfect in everything we do, we end up holding ourselves back. It is better to have tried and failed than to never have tried at all. So keep reminding yourself that you are good enough and keep aiming for your new and revised goal.

You may be in a situation where people are asking you about what happened and you think that behind your back they may be judging you. Do not get into how other people see you because in all likelihood they are not spending all day thinking about your failure and have probably forgotten all about it and moved onto newer concerns. Even if they do make nasty, judgy comments about you, remind yourself that no one has a clue about how hard you worked and under what circumstances. They’re just sitting back and criticising, which is the easiest thing to do and an utter waste of time.

And finally do not let anyone label you a failure. At the end of the day you are not your academic or career achievements, so don’t let that define or label you.

Dear Auntie,

I have been married for more than six years to a decent man and we have one five year-old son. We have a good life and don’t fight much, but my husband is not very romantic. He works hard and provides well for us. He loves our son and his job, but I feel that he doesn’t love me because he is not very romantic.

We hardly talk to each other and barely have anything to say to each other. I feel very lonely and feel like we have a lot of issues that need to be solved. We are friendly but we are not like husband and wife. I feel like when I am old I will become very lonely. What should I do?

Friend

Dear Wife,

This is the time when your child is young that you should find a relative or a babysitter to look after your son. This will allow you and your husband to go out occasionally for dinner. Such things will put your marriage in the centre of both your lives.

You have to make an effort to spend time together and talk to each other when you are doing those things. Start going out for dinner, take a vacation or go out to buy things for the house (even if it is just the monthly groceries) together to start building your relationship. And if you still feel that you are not getting any closer, try getting some profession counselling. It could be that the reason for your loneliness has completely different roots.

Auntie will not reply privately to any query. Please send concise queries to: auntieagni@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, October 26th, 2014