Every army quarter we lived in had a ceiling that leaked. Come monsoon, Ma would arrange buckets and bowls across the floor, and we children would hop between them, joyful, making a ritual out of inconvenience. The big colonial fans needed a bamboo danda to get turning. We chased butterflies, crashed while learning skating, and let go of homes and friends and cities, knowing they were temporary. Nobody told us what motivation was supposed to look like. We just lived.That world feels very far away right now. The UPSC results have just been declared, and already the air is thick with a familiar urgency, aspirants regrouping, the next cycle beginning, NEET examinations underway. Everywhere, the same language, hours logged, ranks chased, dreams quantified. Motivation is the season’s loudest word again.AdvertisementAnd in the middle of that noise, I find myself returning to something far quieter. Back to those years.Also Read | Who is development really for? Ask Delhi’s pigeonsAll the while growing up, among the innumerable dreams I had, one was to be Miss India. I would stand in front of the mirror and rehearse my answers, the usual ones. “Who is your role model?” “My mother.” “Mother Teresa.” “Anyone who inspires me to be a better human being.” I had memorised those lines like a parrot, word perfect, emotionless. Because when you’re young, perfection feels safer than truth. But if someone were to ask me that same question today, after everything life has managed to teach and un-teach me, I’d probably say, “My role model is a donkey.” Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? But maybe that’s the thing, we spend our lives in glitter, in applause, in the noise around becoming something, and forget that sometimes the quietest lives teach the loudest lessons.Perhaps that is also why, in this restless age of social media, reels, shorts, and videos screaming motivation, there’s never a shortage of people telling you how to live, what to want, how fast to become it. Yet, whenever I stumble upon one of those loud motivational clips, I quietly throw my phone aside and think of the one true inspiration that’s been constant in my life. It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t sparkle. It just stays. Maybe that’s why I never really fit into this fast-paced world of instant inspiration. My heroes were always slower, quieter, and oddly four-legged.AdvertisementAnd maybe that’s why I never really had stories of the usual kind. Girls and women often tell stories about the men who chased them, flirted with them, or followed them home. Chased I was, though. But not by a man. It was a donkey.I was in high school then, one of those lazy cantonment afternoons when the air smelled of eucalyptus, and even the trains to Jammu seemed half asleep. I was walking along the road beside the tracks, lost in thought, when I heard a sudden rush behind me. A donkey, light, free, with no load on its back, was running straight down the road. Startled, I ran too. Two creatures, equally aimless, sprinting through the heat. I stumbled into a bush, heart pounding, and when I looked up, the donkey was already past me, chasing nothing but its own direction. That, I think, was my first heartbreak, realising it was never after me.Years later, when I was in medical school, I saw another donkey. This one was nothing like the first, frail, small, its mouth frothing as it carried a mountain of weight across a crowded street. People honked, swerved, and hurried past. The donkey just walked. Step after step, steady, silent. When I reached my hostel room that evening, I cried and cried and cried. I didn’t even know why, maybe because something in me recognised that quiet endurance.you may likeAnd then, years later still, when I finally moved into my own apartment, I found myself watching donkeys. The open field across my balcony had turned into a construction site, once full of wildflowers, grazing cows, and rolling dogs. Now, lines of donkeys carried bricks from one end to another. No chaos, no noise, no drama, just a quiet rhythm. They knew their path, carried their load, and kept walking. And maybe that’s why they stayed with me, through every phase, every city, every failure, every heartbreak.So when someone asks me, “Are you happy?” I pause, because happiness feels like such a shape-shifting thing. How do you explain that you’re not sure? So I tell them the truth I know. When I see dogs, I’m happy. When I see ice cream, I’m happy. And when I see donkeys, I’m happy too. Because I’ve learned a few quiet things from them, that you can carry your weight without noise, that you can move forward without applause, and that when life kicks, you can choose to bray a little louder.Not everything that matters needs to be measured the way we are told it should be.Mohanta is a Delhi-based writer