Written By | Hyder Ali Aidoruus

Estimated Reading Time | 4 minutes

Hyder Ali Aidoruus is a Pharmacist postgraduate turned entrepreneur & performing musician based in Dubai. He was born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and moved to India for his studies. Early from childhood, he developed a taste for reading and started with fiction books in English in school. As he grew up, he moved to non-fiction books and other formats of books like audiobooks and ebooks, but still romancing on hardcovers. Carrying a dream of writing a book since his college days, in 2021 February, he decided to go for it. Currently, he is writing his debut book and is planning to finish by the end of the year; he publishes some of the chapters of his books online.

I kept thinking about the email I’m about to receive. An hour goes, a day goes, a week goes. And then it came; the email finally arrived in my inbox. “Sorry, we’re not able to hire you this time, but we will keep you posted in case of any changes and updates.” My mind rushed to disappointment. All I could think was, “I got rejected.” My head revolved around the question, “what was wrong with ME that I wasn’t I hired?”. Day in day out, the same thoughts.

Now let’s see what happened on the other side, which I came to know about later.

Rewinding to when I sent my portfolio by email: They received my email and go through my portfolio. The Manager is impressed and passes the file to the corporate. He gets the reply; for now, they have decided not to hire anyone until further notice. The Manager keeps trying to get me in, and days go. Finally, when he realizes it’s not going to go forward, he replies to me with the above email.

What went down here? Was it anything related to me, which caused the outcome of them not hiring me? Not exactly. But what am I thinking about day in and day out? “What’s wrong with ME?”. This explains the existence of what I call an “Alternate Truth.”

We all tend to relate every negative outcome to ourselves. What did I do? What did I say? Why did they reject ME? Was I not enough? Did I do anything wrong? The long list of questions goes on. But have we ever considered, or at least gave a benefit of the doubt of the existence of an alternate truth? The probability of something else which is entirely different from what is in our heads? There is still a chance, right?

The moment something happens, which is unpleasant, we are in a hurry to blame ourselves or blame someone else or conclude WHY it happened the way it happened. We are so eager to make sense of it. In this race of mind, we always forget to consider that we don’t know what’s happening on the other end where we are not present. We are not a part of the other party. We did not see what went down on the other side. We jump to conclusions depending on the few facts or materials we have in front of us.

The sooner we consider that there is always an “alternate truth” in every unpleasant thing which happens to us, or at least there is a chance for an alternate truth, the sooner we find peace in everything. We spoil our peace; we ruin our happiness, we spoil our mindsets. It’s us, nobody else. We have to accept or at least learn to think with the existence of an alternate truth, and life becomes easier. We learn to move on.

We all have come across these situations. It could be a negative response from an interview you appeared for; it could be a rejection from someone you love, could be a breakup, could be many things. We tend to connect the dots before us and jump to conclusions so fast that it (in most cases) reaches a negative one and ruins our peace. 

The whole point of The Theory of Alternate Truth doesn’t mean your conclusion is wrong or could be wrong. Your conclusion may be right. But the way of thinking of the existence of an alternate truth gives us peace. It makes us feel that there could be an entirely different reason why it went down the way it went down. At the end of the day, what matters is we move on and with a less agitated or disturbed mind.

And let The Theory of Alternate Truth give you some breathing space before you jump to conclusions.