Limhachan Kikon
Duncan Bosti Dimapur
Last week, Lionel Messi scored a hat-trick in Argentina’s World Cup opener against Algeria and walked off the field in tears. Most assumed the tears were about football. Later, Messi explained they weren’t. He had been going through difficult days away from the game.
That moment revealed something profound: even for someone who has reached the pinnacle of success, life does not stop being human.
Perhaps the greatest illusion of our generation is the belief that there is a place where everything finally gets resolved. We tell ourselves that the next promotion will bring peace, the next salary will bring security, the next achievement will bring meaning.
Beneath these ambitions lies a quiet promise: “When I get there, I’ll finally be okay.” Yet when we arrive, we often discover that the relief is temporary, while the deeper questions remain.
Nagaland has its own version of this illusion. For decades, we have often believed that one final political settlement, one economic package, one government, or one transformative project would finally unlock our future. These things matter. They should be pursued. But they cannot substitute for the everyday choices that build a society.
Waiting can quietly become a way of postponing responsibility. We tell ourselves that we will innovate once conditions improve, invest once uncertainty disappears, build institutions once every disagreement is resolved, and embrace excellence once history has finished unfolding. In doing so, we risk making our future dependent on circumstances we do not fully control.
Messi’s tears remind us of a different truth. Life has no emotional airplane mode. Success does not switch off uncertainty, grief, or struggle. Turbulence does not disappear once we reach a certain altitude. It simply meets us there. The same is true for individuals, families, institutions, and societies.
The measure of a person—or of a people—is not whether every problem has been solved before they begin. It is whether they choose responsibility despite unfinished circumstances. Every thriving society in history has learned to build amid uncertainty, disagreement, and imperfection.
Perhaps Nagaland’s future does not begin after everything is resolved. Perhaps it begins the moment we stop negotiating with reality and start exercising agency within it. History shapes the conditions we inherit, but it does not determine the courage with which we respond to them.
Messi’s tears were not a story about football. They were a reminder that no destination removes the human condition. Likewise, Nagaland should not wait for perfect conditions before choosing responsibility.
Agency—the ability to think for ourselves, confront reality honestly, make responsible choices, and change our minds when the evidence requires it—is not the reward for resolution. It is the path to it.
