Holy Week. Time to reflect. And since I’m not really into doing things just because they are traditionally done in this certain time (hippie me), I will just post random realizations I made in the past. It’s good to live by with some of your realizations just to keep you grounded, or just to remind us ‘Hey, you’ve been there. You know how it feels.’
(Most of the realizations I made happened last year, a year when I went through a lot since it is during that time when I talked to my self a lot.)
#1 Respect is something you gain. You cannot ask people to respect you just because you want them to.
There are certain factors which dictates how much respect you ‘deserve’ to get – age, background, status et cetera. But I realized that I can’t respect others just because these factors tell me to do so. I’m not saying that I would be disrespectful to people I don’t feel like respecting, it’s just that i cannot give them the respect they think they deserve.
I have realized that it is easier to give the respect a person deserves rather than giving them the respect they think they deserve.
#2 Your life, your choice.
I mean everything that happens in our lives is our personal choice. We choose to be happy. We choose to be sad. We choose to get hurt. We choose to hurt somebody. Outside forces play a factor in our decision-making, but it is always our choice that matters. We can also choose to let others decide for us. It’s our choice.
Say you are going through rough times, it doesn’t necessarily follow that we feel sad or down, we can choose to feel otherwise. It’s your choice if you want to feel terribly hurt after a heart break, but you can also choose to move-on and be happy.
When you have come to the realizations that it is your choice that really matters, it would be easier for you to get into the bottom of your problems and solve it. Easier because you don’t have to blame…
#3 Quit blaming.
This realization pinches my heart every time I think deeply about it.
I have been in a situation wherein a lot of people are involved. It is complicated and I took most of the impact it made. It is always easier to point fingers during those times and say “Hey! I’m going through all of this because of you. It’s all your fault.” But no, I decided not to look far and blame everybody else with all the troubles I have been through.
Instead of holding grudges and keeping hatred, I tried to look into them. I tried to see through them. I even tried to situate myself in theirs and tried to understand their disappointments. Yes, everybody has their disappointments and once you realized that they also go through pain and hardships, you would realize that they are also like you.
When you start seeing the disappointments of others, you can compare them with yours and soon you’ll realize that at some point, everybody is luckier than everybody else.
#4 ALWAYS keep a strong relationship with our family.
Our family loves us beyond any love that there is. They are the people who would accept us and all our facets. They are also the same people who made us who we are.
One of the biggest decisions I made is to give up a lot up things just to keep our family. I have to step up and be the bigger man. I have to broaden my mind and strengthen my defenses just to solve problems we have.
I chose to fix something that is permanent and ditch out something that would eventually fade. I did that because I know that at the end of the day, it is my family who would embrace me despite all my disappointments and hang-ups.
#5 It is fine to have regrets.
Maybe you’ve heard a lot of people say that they have no regrets, I am not one of them and I feel no shame.
I believe that it is better to acknowledge your regrets because you will learn something from not experiencing something. And it’s always fun to leave some things unexplained and unknown.
Live with your regrets, not in them.
#6 Not everybody matters.
We cannot choose the people who would come and go in our lives. It is not like accepting and ignoring friends on Facebook. But what we have control with is the people who would make an impact, people whose words would affect us.
I’ve learned that not everyone we know has something good to say to and abut us. I decided to filter out those who matter to me and those who didn’t. It’s like having an automated filtering device inside my head which functions whenever I hear a thing being said about me. Whenever someone insignificant says something bad about me, I’ll just let them be because they don’t really matter to me. It’s also for saving myself from too much negative stuff.
I also try not to explain things to everybody because some people don’t need explanations, they just WANT them.
#7 Nothing is more discouraging than unappreciated sarcasm.
But it’s fun at times.
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They say that once you hit rock bottom, there is nowhere to go but ‘up’. Then I realized that there are more important things than going up and staying on top.
It’s sad to think that I have to learn things the hard way, still I learned something. I was given a chance to see things in a bigger picture. My failures have opened my eyes to see the other side of things.
I know that there are some things I failed to write, but I guess some realizations are better left undocumented because there are some things in life that cannot be put to words.
And to make up with the lack of inspiration on my post, I’ll just add some of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite books, Tuesday with Morrie by Mitch Albom, which accompanied me throughout my journey to seeing things in a greater perspective.
“What if today were my last day on earth? … the culture doesn’t encourage you to think about such things until you’re about to die. We’re so wrapped up with egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks – we’re involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don’t get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing? … You need someone to probe you in that direction. It just won’t happen automatically.”
“… detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience *penetrate* you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you *fully*. That’s how you are able to leave it.
…
Take any emotion – love for a woman, or grief for a loved one…. if you hold back on the emotions – if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them – you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.
But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. … I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.”
…
“Same for loneliness: you let go, let the tears flow, feel it completely – but eventually be able to say, ‘All right, that was my moment with loneliness. I’m not afraid of feeling lonely, but now I’m going to put that loneliness aside and know that there are other emotions in the world, and I’m going to experience them as well.”
Mental Domain 