It has been a few weekends since I have participated in this initiative, and, to be honest, sometimes it was for reasons beyond my control and sometimes because I could not find the right words for it in the midst of my inner storms.
I have already said that I am an eternal learner, and my goal is to improve every day. I aspire to become a virtuous person because I recognize that we are not born that way; this is built through practice, self-study, putting or taking away where there is a lack or excess, and giving true meaning to everything we do.
So I think that this subject that Galenkp proposes is very interesting to let my thoughts run and talk a little about this process in which I am immersed.
What three elements of life would you say are the most important to you and why?
Difficulty
Ever since I became aware and began to see and feel the ups and downs of life, one of the things that bothered me the most, even to the point of feeling miserable, was difficulty. Imagine living in the country I live in, where everything is so convoluted, complex and hilarious that one comes to question whether we are really part of this world.
For the record, I still have those flashes today, and I curse and grieve and say to myself, Why is everything always so difficult for me? That's how I sailed for years, almost shattered, my spirits down, wishing I had never been born, sometimes, or, for example, I even told my mother why, if I was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, she didn't leave me there. Well, you see what is happening in Ukraine today, which may give some clues as to where I am heading in this discourse.
However, some time ago, I started to approach this question of difficulty in a very different way, and every time I find myself in a difficult situation or moment in my life, instead of regretting it, I think that it is out of it that real growth takes place. I am called, therefore, to be more creative. To respond to something and to solve it, instead of being tied to a wall of regrets. And so when I looked back, I could see how I learned to do things that I would never have been able to learn and know in a comfortable environment and with everything at my disposal and within my reach.
I repeat: many times those flashes of regret and complaint come, and I push them away, sometimes faster than others.
Remember that nobody is perfect, and this is about learning every day in practice.
So difficulty is something that is going to show up in our lives in many ways. It doesn't matter where we are. It will present itself, and the best we can do is to give it a luxurious response.
Difficulty is also in the stumbles we take on our journey. We fall many times. And what is expected of us? Perhaps that we stand there defeated and shattered. We don't. We get up many more times than we fall, because life is a journey, as I said, and it is a journey of personal growth. In reality, few people honestly care about you, but I do care about myself. That is why I get up again and again.
In this journey of difficulties, I have been able to observe that everyone is immersed in their own struggles, which has made me think that I should not judge others and be empathetic and compassionate with everyone, without neglecting myself, of course, because some people can be very harmful, without even caring. And this brings me to another thing that I consider important in my life:
Thoughts
If you stop to think a little bit, your thinking is the only thing you can really control in this life.
Notice how important thoughts are; it is through thoughts that we judge and choose to agree or disagree with people or situations, suffer, and get angry at external events that are not up to us, nor do we have power over them.
So I believe that we have to fill ourselves with something called peace, appease our thoughts and redirect them to where we can be useful. We can transform negative thoughts into positive ones and thus give a better meaning to our lives. Ultimately, if someone offends me, if I see someone doing wrong, or talking about someone else in him/her absence, I can reject this in my thinking, not be a part of it, and tell myself that I don't accept it.
If someone offends me, it is not the offense itself that bothers me. Everyone can do or say what they want; I can't control that. But if I let myself be carried away by the offense or by the bad energy of the offender and I give him/her a bad answer; I put myself on his level; I harbor resentment; I want revenge; the offense makes me feel bad, etc.; it is only my thoughts tied to someone else. I am not free. I am being a slave to someone, who doesn't even care about me. Furthermore, I overshadow my existence and devolve instead of moving forward.
If I am in a place where someone else is being spoken badly about, I might even ask that person if he/she would like that done to him/her. But what is appropriate here is to move away from these attitudes, put them out of my thoughts, and get on with my own business.
Again, I make it clear that I have offended, hurt with selfish attitudes and vain pride, and said negative things about another person in his or her absence. We have all done that. However, recognizing what we did wrong and straightening the course is also valid. That is what the past is for—to learn from it, not to live in it.
A nice way to understand who we are and what we do is to put this idea into our thinking:
The one who is depressed is living in the past, the one who is anxious is living in the future, and the one who is at peace is living in the present.
This was said by the Chinese philosopher Lao-Tse, so we can believe him, can't we?
There is a lot to talk about when it comes to thought. Often, ideas come to it that harbor and fuel fear. Fear is so terrible, as @avdesing said in her post. It paralyzes us. And it's not that we don't feel it; we all feel fears, and it's something very natural, but we also need to face them and overcome them. It is the best way to recognize our worth and the creative power we have. Then we have to put our thoughts to work and weave fine threads around our fears, observing them, observing ourselves and remembering everything we have achieved, giving priority to the positive over the negative, looking deep down for each one of the resources we have to face that fear, and many more things, which we will only find in an internal conversation.
Our thoughts are like an image projector and, at the same time, an archive full of useful tools for every moment of our lives. And one more thing: we can even order and clean this archive. That is to say, we can put better ideas; let's call them renewed and progressing documents.
The other important thing in my life —already this post is getting too long, I know— is myself. And I marked it up there in bold.
Myself
I am the main element in my life. I have to work on it every day with constancy and with conviction that I deserve all good things and love. To be aware that I came into the world to be happy and enjoy myself, not to suffer, complain, and be miserable. That's not what any of us came into the world for.
What happens is that we have free will, and we create our reality with our thoughts and then the actions that emanate from those thoughts.
Einstein said that, didn't he @avdesing?
We are architects of our destiny.
Life is short; what will you ask yourself on your deathbed?
Love, and you will be loved. If you spend your whole life looking for happiness out there or if you think it depends on things or other people, you will not find it because it is within you. In other words, if you recognize this, even in solitude, you will be happy. Notice that it is not the one who desires more who is happier, but the one who knows how to value what he has.
I heard something recently that made me smile. The malevolent cannot be happy in solitude because he will be accompanied by evil, that is, by himself; while the kind, the one who is genuine and good, will have for company the most immense force in this Universe: love.
I could go on writing, but let's leave some for another time. This post covers all the topics I have missed.
😉
Original content by @nanixxx. All rights reserved ©, 2024.