Wandering thoughts- Part 5: Choices

Sometimes I wonder what IF, I could change one thing I did or the one step that I took or one choice that I made in the past. That is a BIG IF and there is nothing I can change about it but what I  can change is my future by choosing right now how I want to live the rest of my life.

 “Two roads diverged in the yellow wood,

and sorry I could not travel both……

I took the one less travelled by

And that has made all the difference”- the famous poem “The Road not taken” by Robert Frost is one of the best example of the dilemma of choosing.  

As per the William Glasser, “all the choices we make are to satisfy the five basic needs: survival, love & belonging, power, freedom and fun.” People may argue that having a free choice is mankind’s greatest gift and also its greatest curse, but for me, the choice is the purest form of free will (way better than the freedom promised by our constitution). In book Man’s Search for Meaning, the Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl observed that “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” If there was no choice then a person might never grow mentally because only by choosing we learn to be responsible and get to know our capabilities. For a child most of the things, likes/dislikes, wrong/rights etc. are decided by the parents but as he/she grows older decision may still be influenced by other but choices are his/her personal.

For some people making choices is hard because they hate to make decisions as they are always afraid of the consequences of a wrong decision. For them, every decision they make is like making a commitment to a choice and sticking with it. The main problem is when they face a situation where they have to make a choice; they overlook at the long term impact on their life but only worry about the immediate results.  And then there is another kind who can make choices like making tea using tea bags. They don’t get confused by the options available and sort out things/priorities/emotions in their mind and then just apply the basics in each situation they face. From a simple thing of getting up on time in the morning or what to eat for lunch to where you want to see yourself in the next 10 years or to choose a partner, the range of choices is unimaginable and overwhelming. 

Our faith, core values and attitude towards life are influenced by our choices.  Materialistic choices like Education, job, location, financial decisions are relatively easy to choose.  But what most people struggle with is relationships and a person should choose them wisely as they affect our thoughts & life more than we can think of.  We live in an unprecedented age of options and sometimes making choices can be a little difficult as choosing something inherently means giving up something else. But the best choices in life are the ones whose consequences align with your long term goals, even if they are hard in the beginning.

And no matter what the situation is, there is always a choice and that choice makes all the difference in life. Period.

Wandering thoughts- Part 4: Expectation and acceptance

Voltaire said “We never live; we are always in expectation of living”.

We all have dreams and where there is a dream there has to be a sea of expectations. And when these expectations rule our lives, we surely end up disappointing someone (mostly yourself) in the process because we start measuring our success with an ambiguous scale. But how can one be sure what does he want, till he gets what he wants and see if he likes it or not? In this unending pursuit of desires, a person gets lost in the maze created by himself. But the irony is that these expectations/desires play a very important role in shaping our zeal to achieve our goals. So the question is how do we know whether expectations are good or bad. Actually, the answer is simple – replace your expectations with hope. Because an expectation is a strong belief that something will happen while ignoring the possibilities of failure, while hope is a light belief that something will happen and at the same time acknowledging that other part. We need to accept life with all its unpredictability, as happiness only exists in acceptance. Of course, life will bring many challenges, such as the death of/ separation from someone we love, and it’s not easy to embrace those feelings when we’re suffering and wishing those things would have never happened. But if we start cultivating acceptance in our lives right now, we’ll likely cope with future crises in a different way and view them from a different perspective.

We expect to change our life for good by doing simple things like lose weight, read more books or become a better person, but we are flawed, imperfect and can be easily distracted. And whenever we fail we consistently let ourselves down and fall short of our goals and feel disappointed. But we should never give up on ourselves or lose hope. And as Andy Dufresne in the letter to Red (in movie Shawshank Redemption) wrote, “hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” Accept your failures and try to improve just 1 % each day. You need to stop focusing on the end results and start paying attention to the process, believe me, you will achieve anything in your life. 

Wandering thoughts- Part 3: Gratitude

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things”.- Robart Braoult.

They say gratitude attracts positive people in your life who make it easier for you to handle the stressful situations, but often we forget to show our gratitude to the most important people in our life i.e. our family. It’s true that we don’t get to choose them but they sure are the one who have stayed with us through thick and thin. Our parents laid the foundation path that we walk on and our families had supported us to achieve our goals. Still, we often neglect their roles in our life. In pursuit of an illusion of something or someone better for us, rather an appreciating what we have we tend to take it for granted. Never take your family and friends for granted, because one day, they won’t be around to be taken for granted any longer; and regret is a tough pill to swallow. People don’t get over regret, but they do get over the loss of a loved one and take solace in how much that loved one knew how much you loved, respected and valued them while they were alive.

Yes we all work hard to become independent and self-sufficient but in that process, we become an ‘avoidant’- distancing from the loved ones and sometimes even from our self. Initially, we ignore the people and slowly we start ignoring our own feelings. But we need to learn from the past and make a promise to ourselves that we’ll sort out all the unresolved issues and things left unsaid because much unhappiness has come into the world because of this bewilderment. Make efforts to correct the things you’ve been doing wrong for a very long time and before trying to make amends to the relationships, first make with your inner self. Share your present with the people you love and enjoy the journey because happiness is not a destination. And the one thing that can change your life for good and help you find the satisfaction you’ve been searching for is – Gratitude.  

Wandering thoughts- Part 2: Feelings

Emotions make us human, denying them makes us beasts. — Victoria Klein

 As a human, we’re meant to feel all kind of emotions like joy, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger etc. And the feelings that you yourself are afraid to acknowledge are the most important ones in moulding your perception about life and behaviour with others. As a child, we’re open about feelings but as we grow older we hide them thinking that sharing them (even with the people you love) will reflect weakness on our part. We start pretending to be strong, calm and confident all the time, and we try to bottle up our emotions as if it’s somehow wrong to have natural reactions to life. Even though we know that emotions come and go and can’t be controlled so there’s no reason to worry about them but still we move in the cave of solitude with so much left unsaid and so many feelings buried inside. And by the time we realize it, we think it’s too late and we start questioning will those words/feelings matter now or what if the other person won’t acknowledge them and then there is always that part of our ego stopping us.  And believe me, once the opportunity is lost; we’re the culprit and we’re the victim at the same time. Silence is not the answer when the situation demands us to speak out. So, I’ll suggest you to start talking about it because talking puts words to feelings and allows us to share what’s happening in our minds and let others into our worlds. Telling somebody that you are sad can take some of the sadness away and sharing joy will add more joy. It eases the burden of feeling like the entire world is on our shoulders when in reality that couldn't be farther from the truth, even if there isn't an immediate solution to what we are feeling, sharing these emotions with someone has a tremendous positive impact on our mind and heart.

Wandering thoughts- Part 1: Secluded

After the lockdown (due to the pandemic COVID-19) we had more time with ourselves to reflect upon our life and share the time (that we never had) with our family. But in reality, we’re still living in our cave of solitude and social media is the only place where we feel free and safe to share. For a family, the most important part of the day is the time when all members eat together and talk about their life, but now that also is occupied in binge-watching or scrolling the endless feeds. People think that they live in the most connected world yet the ironically everyone feels so lonely; as most of them are looking for acknowledgement from the unknown random people on the internet rather than talking or celebrating with the one with whom they’re sharing the most important part of life i.e. the Present. People talk over chats for hours without noticing that something was missing there and that something was the attention required for building a strong foundation of the relationships. People scroll for hours with the hope to find nothing. We care about the number of likes on the celebration photographs rather than appreciating the efforts of those who’re present right there and enjoying the moment.  Now the strength of the relationship is somehow related to the speed of the internet. That instant gratification of notification from the social platform is destroying personal lives more than one can imagine. 

I say this is the loneliest generation that mankind has ever witnessed. But there is still hope, as the hope is like a star – not to be seen in the sunshine of prosperity but only to be discovered in the night of adversity.