Son, have I passed my class 10th board exams?

Happy birthday son and welcome to adulthood. Enjoy this day. There are no reasons for not being happy ever and celebrating any day, all the more your milestone birthday. Your grandparents would have loved this moment and would have desired to see you happy and enjoying this day. So have a full blast, whatever way you desire.

It’s also a great day for us, for we (your mother and me) have finished our class 10th Board Exams and are awaiting assessment. Surprised? Yes son, in secret from you, we were both appearing for our class X Board exams. We have a few more exams to go. Still surprised and wondering? Let me explain you.

The year you were born, your mother and me were 28 and 27 - young, unaware, romancing life & each other, living abroad, away from family. We decided to self-study, tutors (family) anyway were not available in proximity. We had to learn 5 subjects - (i) Decision-making for ourselves, (ii) Bringing you up, (iii) Coping with the vagaries of life, (iv) negotiating traffic of people and events in life, (v) Keeping our small family together. Today it is time for you to assess us - How good have we scored in all the aforementioned topics. Son you might not know but every time you were making decisions in mind, me and your mother were sitting for our unit tests. Every time you desisted from doing wrong to yourself or to others we passed the test. Every time you behaved brave, fearless and helped others, we passed the test. Every time there was honesty in words and earnestness in your deeds, we were passing the unit tests, while every time it wasn't, we were failing. Every time there was sincerity at heart and reason in mind or conviction in heart and experiment or action in mind; we passed. Son, I once said to my engineer colleagues, "show me your product and I will tell you who you are". You are our entire life's product. We will be proud to be known by you. So this is how on this day of your 18th birthday we completed our class 10th exams. We are ready for the results. Assessment methodology is simple – add your good and sincere deeds and efforts to instances of having fun and memorable events & endeavours (irrespective of success), then divide by a number reached by adding every time we flunked to the aforementioned summation.

Love and happiness are congenial, so they were never a concern. We are sure you will be happy and loving because that’s inherently you. What's important is that you separate happiness and love from wins and losses to ensure you are ready for the next battle very quickly. Love & happiness that arise from successes or failures are like a hangover, they devoid one off sobriety for next assignment. So don't let your happiness be governed by your decision-making. Like calculus decision-making should be practiced hard and believe me you will perfect the art.