The Blame Game

There are often those tough times in life, when everything seems turning upside down, demanding a decision and throwing you with a challenge of making a choice – of choosing the wrong path or the right, of choosing the easy way out or struggling, of giving into emotion or being practical, or of choosing to believe or let go. These are the times, when your mind and heart are at a constant battle, with one trying to overpower the other. You are left in a state of constant dilemma, trying to desperately evaluate your options.

Often in this war, what we choose is a result of the situation and our emotional state at that moment. There are those who panic and take irrational decisions just to get it over with, and then there are those who carefully analyse the consequences and keep their patience, And also there are people who play the guessing way to try out their luck with things. But, there is another route which people resort to when faced with the not so pleasant times in life – the blame game.

Blaming is often the easiest route out of real life problems. You tend to hold someone else responsible for your terrible situations, but leave them with no credit when something goes right. Because it is easy to put the fault on others and feel lighter, than it is to stand up and take responsibility of your actions. And if this wasn’t just enough, it many a times ends up with blaming the supreme power above for doing this to you or giving you such a horrendous life.  For it is merely a matter of convenience to shift the blame and to feed the pseudo ego burning on the inside.

But your conscience is not a puppet of your wishes, deep down inside it holds you accountable. Because no matter how much you’d like to believe that you aren’t wrong, the guilt does linger on somewhere on the inside. It is often simple to choose the wrong path, but it would often leave you with a void of “what ifs”. Because having confidence in your own self is harder than using an excuse or a cover, but it is much harder loosing your own self than to be unable to face yourself in the mirror and answer you inner voice. Yes, faith is hard to keep in those difficult times, but it is never too late to take charge of your own life.

Opinion and Influence

In this beautiful journey called life, every single day we come across people of different kinds. There are few who are meant to stay forever, while others are there for different wavelengths of time. But each one of them gets a part in the story of our life, just like we add to theirs. While some may take a single paragraph or a page in the book of  life, some are chapters who are meant to stay  through the course of time. As we grow, our stories diverge in different directions with different people, as sub phases of the main plot of dear life. And in this process lies the very beauty of  life, making it even more varying and versatile.

But with this diversity comes in the concept of acceptance, rejection, judgment and perception. We as humans attach notions with every experience, interaction and feeling. They say we have no right to form an opinion of someone based on how they appear on the face of it unless we know their story and step into their shoes. They say be as kind and compassionate as possible to the ones you interact with, for you never know what the other is going through emotionally, mentally or physically. Yet we end up judging and forming an opinion of anyone and everyone, be it consciously or subconsciously. Of a lot of people who you meet in life, you will find some who are warm, caring and emotional, and others who appear rather cold and reserved, some who are chirpy and happy, while others who keep quiet and enjoy the silence. Some may make you smile, while the others may leave you feeling frustrated all the time.

The combination of attributes in these people is never-ending, for two persons can be somewhat similar, but never the same. For people are made out of their past, situations, ambitions, feelings and their state of mind. And what matters is how you deal with such opinions, instead of imposing them or letting them out in the open, being human enough to keep them privately to yourself. For we may not know or realise, how one unkind word, gesture or reaction could affect someone’s self-confidence, push them deeper into distress and make them feel even more undermined. It could make them question their worth or life, and break them down completely from inside. We are gifted with the power of influencing lives, why not show some compassion and make someone rise?

Everyone is fighting a battle of their own, some which we might even be aware of, but we can never feel it in the same way as someone who actually deals with it every single day. For smiling faces often hide and the silent ones are strong inside. And if once, for once, we could keep our prejudices, opinions and preferences aside and see people in a new light, the world would be a different place. A better place.

The law of Action-Reaction

Isn’t it amazing, how life changes every time the hands of the clock tick? How change is inevitable, and how what you have can turn into what you once had? How one moment or that one chance could completely turn everything upside down? But is it true that the incident is solely responsible to make things either better or worse for you? Dwell into yourself and think, the answer will be a ‘NO’.

There is much more to that turning point, which goes beyond the negatives and the positives associated with it, and that is you and your response to it. How you adapt to a situation or grab that one opportunity. But most importantly, how you implement it into your system. How that one incident affects your attitude and behaviour from the moment it enters into your life, is what shapes you as human being. You may make the most of it or you may waste it, it may give you everything or leave you with nothing, but worst of all, it could change you as a person from within.

You might do it unwillingly, sometimes you don’t even realise how an incident affects you and makes you indifferent. Or maybe even oblivious. You just can’t see through it. But sometimes, you forcibly lock yourself up and build an invisible wall right in front of yourself. According to the law of action – reaction, “the force exerted by object 1 upon object 2 is equal in magnitude and opposite in direction to the force exerted by object 2 upon object 1”. So is it fair if our reaction to every person or emotional situation is the same after an action from one situation or that one person? Why do we become cold or why do we develop trust issues or why do we start hating life just because that one incident ruined everything for us?

The beauty of life lies in the fact that it is dynamic. No matter how much we try and control one end, some or the other end is going to flow loose. Like a batsman can’t hit a six at every ball thrown to him, we can’t excel at every challenge life throws at us. You may often feel like the bad times are much longer than the good ones, but you have it in you to go through a situation and come out stronger. You have the will, spirit and patience and you have your time with you. Wounds take a while to heal, and it is okay to be absolutely lost when you’re in shock or pain. But once you decide that you want to heal, come out with the best version of yourself. If something is going to change you, let it be for the positive.

Let every morning serve as a ray of hope after a dark night and the sunrise as a motivation to smile. Get up, take a deep breath and shed the baggage of those not so pleasant past experiences. Let the child in you who was never touched by the tactics of the cruel world thrive again. Let that trust and innocence revive, and let no doubt clog your mind.  Discover yourself, find something you love to do and whenever in life you feel low, do that one activity which serves as your release. Compete only and only with your own self and pat your own back at your smallest achievements.

Do it for your own self, because you and only YOU DESERVE this.