There will be times when you blunder, and you'll look back and say, "yeah that was silly of me," and eventually you laugh it off, learn from it perhaps, and it fades into your past. There will be times when devastation hits and you wonder how things went so horribly wrong, how quickly things change, right? And then, there will be times when you shouldn't feel anything at all but nevertheless, it bothers you and ruins your whole day, week, month....
How do we find that balance when we take that step back to reflect upon the situation? How do we find the strength to move on despite the unfortunate incident? Don't worry about it? It's fine; it'll just go away, or maybe I say the heck with my life and forever live in misery?
Neither, because that's not balance - in neither case do we feel comfortable with our solution, and ultimately, that's the pain we suffer. In neither case will it just go away... completely.
There are many times when people regret what they did. There are many times when people wonder why they haven't changed nor improved. The other day, it hit me, nothing changes because we accept the world for what it is - it's normal that global warming is going on, it's normal that we have an energy crisis with a growing population of seven billion, it's normal to have rush hour with millions of cars and power plants all burning the earth with hell fire. It's normal that we have people dying of poverty and hunger and thirst in the dark alleys and third-world countries compounded by diseases and other fatal sicknesses. It's normal that we're not normal. It's normal that the politics implemented will be stagnant until danger erupts in the last minute, just as high school and college students study for exams and write papers the night before, sensing a threat to their grades and academic performance.
Do you know where this circles back to? Our feelings of entitlement and unbalanced movements. We're afraid, but we just scream it. We're fearful, but we just yell it. We're uncomfortable, but we just complain about it. We're unsettled, but we call that reality. We're unbalanced, but we just say anything else is ideal.
Take a step back.
You aren't here today without your past, so don't be unsettled. You wouldn't be here today without your thoughts, so don't complain. You wouldn't be here without your family, so don't be fearful. You wouldn't be here without your mind, so be greater than your voice. You wouldn't be here without your unbalanced experience, so fight for balance. Not anything else. Because you can't have love without hatred, you can't have the good without the evil, your heart is good because you acknowledge your opponent and obstacle.
Your past may be filled with hatred and ghosts and restlessness and unforgiveable acts, but if you can believe it, that is your foundation of everything you accomplish and everything good that exists today.
Dare to Dwell
"Chronic remorse... is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrong-doing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.... Art also has its morality, and many of the rules of this morality are the same as, or at least analogous to, the rules of ordinary ethics. Remorse, for example, is as undesirable in relation to our bad art as it is in relation to our bad behaviour. The badness should be hunted out, acknowledged and, if possible, avoided in the future. To pore over the literary shortcomings of twenty years ago, to attempt to patch a faulty work into the perfection it missed at its first execution, to spend one's middle age in trying to mend the artistic sins committed and bequeathed by that different person who was oneself in youth-- all this is surely vain and futile. And that is why this new Brave New World is the same as the old one. Its defects as a work of art are considerable; but in order to correct them I should have to rewrite the book-- and in the process of rewriting, as an older, other person, I should probably get rid not only of some of the faults of the story, but also of such merits as it originally possessed. And so, resisting the temptation to wallow in artistic remorse, I prefer to leave both well and ill alone and to think about something else." ~Huxley
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
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