Failure and Success: 4 Never give up True Stories of People Chasing Their Dreams
A friend once told me that the most dangerous thing in life is knowing what you want. I laughed and asked why. He said, because then you have no excuse left.
It took me years to understand what he meant.
Most of us live in a strange in-between state. Not content enough to stay, not unhappy enough to change. Just somewhere in the middle, where days pass and we keep telling ourselves we’ll start tomorrow. That tomorrow never comes.
We rarely talk about never give up true stories that don’t have a happy ending yet. The ones still in progress. The ones where the person is still figuring it out.
This article isn’t a formula. I’m not going to tell you five steps that will change your life. I just want to talk about some people I’ve met or heard about, and a few things I’ve been meaning to say for a long time.
The journey of our dreams almost always passes through the space between failure and success.
Alia —– Who Kept Her Dream Hidden
I first met Alia at a wedding. She wasn’t talking to anyone, just sitting in a corner, drinking tea and flipping through a book. People who bring books to weddings are usually interesting, so I went and talked to her.
Alia was thirty-six at the time. She was from Multan, a mother of two, her husband a government employee. From the outside, a completely ordinary life. But as we talked, I found out she had been quietly doing something for the past four years. She writes stories for children and reads them aloud to the kids in her neighborhood.
I asked why she hadn’t published them. She was quiet for a moment, then said she never thought of it as something that big. It just happens, she said.
I thought that was a very ordinary answer. But then I thought, no. Alia spent four years doing something without asking anyone for praise, without telling anyone, without any grand purpose. Just because it felt good to her.
Is that some great achievement? No. Did Alia become famous? No. Have her stories been published? Not yet. But every Friday at two in the afternoon, seven or eight children sit outside her door and wait to hear what today’s story will be.
A dream doesn’t need to be famous. A dream needs to be real. And a real dream is one you keep doing when no one is watching, when no one is praising you, when it doesn’t seem to matter to anyone.
Alia’s is one of those never give up true stories that nobody talks about, because her victory has no announcement.
Amina —– Who Started at the Wrong Time
Amina’s story is a little different, and I’m writing it because it has everything in it that nobody wants to hear.
Amina opened her beauty salon at twenty-four in Nazimabad, Karachi. Her husband didn’t oppose it but didn’t help either. Her in-laws turned up their noses. The first six months went well, then a bigger salon opened nearby with AC and parking, and her customers left.
Amina took a loan, expanded the room, installed AC. It took two years to pay off the loan. When she finally did, COVID came and she had to shut the salon down. At twenty-eight, she had a closed salon, a few remaining loan installments, and a one-and-a-half-year-old child.
This is the part of the story that’s hard to write.
Amina didn’t reopen the salon.
She started working from home. Small, limited, just the women nearby. Three years later, that’s still what she’s doing. No big success, no news story, no social media comeback. Just a woman who manages her home and her work at the same time.
I spoke to her once on the phone and asked if she ever thinks about reopening the salon. She said she didn’t know. Maybe. She doesn’t have the courage for it right now.
Is Amina’s story one of failure? I don’t know. But I know she didn’t quit. She’s paused, but she didn’t quit. And maybe that’s enough for now. Every journey has a point where you sit down and catch your breath. That’s not losing.
Amina’s story teaches us that failure and success are not always about the final result.
If you are looking for never give up true stories, Amina’s is not the loud kind. It is the quiet kind, and those are the ones that stay with you.
Irum —– And the One Sentence I Never Forgot
Before I write about Irum, I need to say something about myself.
Years ago, I started something that stayed unfinished. It was a writing project. I was gathering material, making time, things were going well. Then one day someone said that something like this already exists, what you want to do isn’t new. I shut the project down.
I understood later that it was a mistake. Nothing in the world is completely new. Every writer writes even though millions have written before. Every singer sings even though millions of voices already exist. What makes something new isn’t that it’s never been done before. What makes it new is that it’s done in your way.
Irum taught me this, completely without meaning to.
Irum lives in Islamabad, thirty-two years old, works as a clerk in a government office. She started writing poetry three years ago. But she never showed it to anyone, never posted it anywhere, never asked anyone how it was. She just kept writing.
One day a friend saw her diary and asked what it was. Irum said nothing, just something. The friend read one ghazal and said it was really good, you should publish it. Irum said no, not yet.
I asked Irum why not. She said when I write, I’m not writing for anyone. If people start reading it, I’ll start thinking about them while I write, and then what comes from inside won’t come anymore.
I saved that line in my phone. Because it had an answer to a lot of things in it.
Irum’s poetry hasn’t made it into a book yet. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. But Irum keeps writing and it makes her happy. Is that success? You decide.
Irum never set out to inspire anyone. But sitting with her story, you realize these are the never give up true stories that live in diaries, not headlines.
Naveed —– Who Is Still on the Way
Naveed is an old friend of mine. We studied together in Peshawar. He was average in studies but sharp at everything that exists outside of books.
After engineering, he didn’t take a job. He went straight into trying to start something of his own. First was a mobile phone repair shop. It ran for six months then closed. Second was online tutoring. That didn’t go far either. Third was freelancing with a company. That company sank.
Three years passed. His father told him to just get a job, enough is enough. Naveed got a job, started teaching at a private school. The salary was fifteen thousand rupees.
But he hadn’t given up. He was just waiting for the right moment. At night, he’d make videos for school students and upload them to YouTube. After a year, he had three hundred subscribers. Nothing much.
Then he made a video on a difficult matric question that appears in every board exam in Pakistan. Someone shared it, then someone else, then someone else. In three weeks it got eighty thousand views.
Today Naveed has a hundred and fifty thousand subscribers on YouTube, and he still teaches at the school. He didn’t quit the job because he loves teaching children in person. His YouTube income has now crossed his salary, but he told me himself, he’s not leaving the school.
I asked him what he used to think during those three years when everything was failing. He said honestly, many times it felt like his father was right. Many nights before sleeping he’d wonder if all of it was pointless. But in the morning he’d think something different. He didn’t know why.
I think that not knowing why is actually the whole point. Many people keep going because they have a big reason. But some people keep going because stopping doesn’t seem worth it. Naveed is the second kind, and I think that’s a strength too.
In Naveed’s life, both failure and success played their part in shaping who he became.
Naveed’s journey is one of those never give up true stories where the person himself did not know he was being brave. He just kept going.
At the End —– One Question
I’ve written about four people. Alia who writes in secret, Amina who is paused right now, Irum who doesn’t want to be seen, and Naveed who doesn’t know why he kept going.
None of these are perfect stories. None of them make you say, what a life. These are ordinary people trying to do something in their own way, moving forward sometimes, stopping sometimes, succeeding sometimes and sometimes not.
And that is real life.
The stories we see on social media are usually complete. Hardship came, they fought, they won, the end. But in reality most people are standing somewhere in the middle. Not complete failure, not complete success. Just moving.
And to keep moving, in your own way, at your own pace, that is also a kind of courage we usually don’t recognize.
I want to ask you one question. Not a philosophical one, just a straight thing. What is that one thing in your life that you want to do but aren’t doing? Not a job, not a house, not responsibilities. That one thing that is for you, only for you.
The truth is, failure and success are not destinations. They are just part of the ride.
You don’t have to answer that to anyone. Just ask yourself, and listen to whatever comes.
The world is full of never give up true stories. Most of them will never go viral. Most of them happen in small rooms, quiet routines, and ordinary lives. And that is exactly what makes them real.
We’ll see the rest as we go.
It is better to think carefully before making a decision than to regret it after.
For the regret that comes after a decision is already made, read our article here.
