Difficulties Arise Only When the Path Leads Toward Success

Ravi was always an average boy in a world that admired brilliance. He wasn’t top of his class, wasn’t a gifted athlete, and didn’t have the kind of charm that made people instantly notice him. But what he had—though he didn’t realize it at first—was something far rarer: quiet resilience.

He grew up in a small town where people believed in settling early. Most of his classmates had either joined their family businesses or taken up safe government jobs by the time they were twenty. Ravi, however, had a different dream. He wanted to become a software engineer and build something that could change people’s lives.

When he told his father, a tailor who had stitched clothes for three decades, the man looked at him for a long time and simply said, “Then be ready. Big dreams invite bigger storms.”

Ravi smiled, unaware just how true those words would become.

He moved to the city with barely enough money to last two weeks. His college was competitive, the professors were strict, and most students had already spent years in coaching centers. Ravi struggled to keep up. He studied in libraries during the day and worked part-time in a café at night, often surviving on a single meal to save money.

There were days when he thought about giving up—especially when his laptop crashed just before an important coding assignment or when he couldn’t understand the advanced programming languages that others seemed to master effortlessly. One of his professors once told him bluntly, “If you can’t handle pressure, you won’t last in this field.”

But Ravi remembered his father’s words.

He started waking up earlier, attending free online coding workshops, and practicing every day. He built small apps—nothing grand, just useful things like a to-do list, a budget tracker, and a local train schedule app. Slowly, his confidence began to grow. He wasn’t winning any medals, but he was learning. Improving.

In his final year, Ravi applied for internships at every major tech company he could find. He was rejected by sixteen. The seventeenth—an upcoming startup—invited him for an interview.

When he walked into the office, he realized it wasn’t the polished place he had imagined. It was just a small room with five desks and peeling paint, but the founder, Meera, listened to him differently than others had.

“You’re not from a fancy background,” she said after reviewing his portfolio. “But you’ve built things. That matters more than grades.”

She gave him a chance.

The first few weeks were rough. He was expected to deliver real results, not just college projects. Sometimes he stayed up all night fixing bugs or reading documentation just to understand how to complete a task. But he loved every minute of it. For the first time, he was doing something that felt meaningful.

Months passed, and Ravi grew into his role. He helped the company streamline its backend system and even created a tool that saved the team hours of manual work each week. His work caught the attention of a major investor, who praised the efficiency of the startup’s software.

Eventually, when Meera expanded the company, she promoted Ravi to lead a new team. He could barely believe it—the boy who once couldn’t afford a proper meal was now mentoring others.

At the company’s annual meet, she introduced him as “the guy who didn’t quit when things got hard.”

That evening, as Ravi sat alone on the office terrace, he called his father.

“I got promoted,” he said quietly.

There was a long pause. Then his father’s voice came through, thick with emotion. “You earned it. You walked through the storm.”

Ravi smiled. “You were right. The path got harder as I got closer to my goal. But I’m still walking.”