Tag: gratitude

  • Obliviously Resilient

    I’ve always taken comfort from my sense of resilience, but noticed recently that it appears to be waning. I seem to be more sensitive than before to the emotional jarring that goes with betrayal, and this concerns me. Well, at first it did, but now I’m simply afraid of reflecting any further on the subject. There have been times when in the moment, I found myself unfazed by the abrasiveness or abuse being meted out towards me. It always appeared to be black or white for me. Something was either right, or it was wrong, and the underlying principle that supported my observation or perception was all that I cared about. It was such an easy way to live.

    Life isn’t as simple anymore. Principles still drive me, but they’re not as defining as they used to be. The reason I’m afraid of reflecting further is because I’ve realised that the more I grow to understand my weaknesses, my needs, or my flaws, the more I relate to the flaws and weaknesses and failings of others. Unfortunately, this also implies that the reverse is true as well, not in them knowing me, but rather in me also being able to grow more familiar with the arrogance, the aloofness, and the smug condescension that lurks behind the smile that dresses the words of so many I meet. It is in this realisation that I start doubting my past resilience and wonder if it was in fact resilience based on strength of character, or was it resilience grounded in obliviousness.

    The net effect remains a beneficial one, so the concern I feel must be an indulgence in my own ego. Anyone claiming to be free of their ego is in fact driven by it. I guess that is the obvious sibling to the realisation that the proclamation of humility is in fact arrogance. I’m so easily distracted from the point of my ramblings these days. Being oblivious, not by choice, therefore appears to be a blessing. It’s what causes us to appear resilient, but it also causes us to appear grounded and uninterested in things that don’t concern us. Strangely enough I am once again reminded of the parallels between this and humility. I’ve previously argued that humility can only be observed and not practiced. I guess in some way, the same applies to resilience.

    The same way that I may appear humble when in fact I am too jaded to acknowledge the superficial praises of others makes me jaded, not humble. Similarly, being oblivious to the true repercussions of the events I am experiencing results in a resilience that is unintended, although mostly beneficial. I think there is a point in here somewhere. I think my distracted state is a source of inspiration. I’m just too distracted to figure out how to put it to good use.

    Perhaps distraction and naivety are the precursors to obliviousness. Such obliviousness, where its roots are not conscious choices, contributes to our sense of resilience. Questioning that resilience appears to be akin to looking a gift horse in the mouth. So perhaps I should be grateful for my inclination to be unconcerned about the fickleness of society, and instead of questioning how I may have appeared to others in my moments of oblivion that I previously embraced as resilience, I should draw on those experiences to harness this innate ability to be oblivious so that I can continue to feign resilience.

    Fake it until you make it, right? Who can truly lay claim to sincerity when such a claim requires a healthy dose of self-indulgence to begin with? But that’s a post for another day. My brain is tired. And if you can make sense of this post, please take a moment to explain it to me as well.

  • Reverse Engineering Life

    It seems that I’ve wasted most of my life experiences during the years when I quietly contended with the upheavals in my life and moved silently forward without making a fuss of what I wanted, nor questioning why it always seemed to happen to me. Through no deliberate effort on my part it strengthened me, even though I, and many around me, often perceived that strength as numbness. There were times when I chastised myself for not having a more emotionally grounded response to the suffering or trials of those around me, but I was also often reminded that it was that very same numbness that allowed others to draw strength from my apparent composure at times when they felt overwhelmed.

    I think there’s a value in having such an emotionally disconnected person around at times. It’s a reminder that not all is lost when all seems lost. But that’s not how most people viewed me, and fortunately my default demeanour of being oblivious to the perceptions that others held of me meant that it didn’t affect me much either. Despite this awkward sense of comfort I had about being able to deal with my reality in ways that caused many to question my sanity (quite literally at times) I felt a growing dis-ease regarding the fact that my experiences were being wasted because it only seemed to benefit me, and no one else. In doing so, it further distanced me from those around me because not many could relate to me just being me.

    I slowly experimented with using my experiences as a point of reference to try to relate to the emotional burden that so many people seem to drag around with them, and each time I tested my observations for accuracy and relevance, I found that it was quite effective in providing others with an alternate perspective as to why their situation was not as grave as it seemed. All this clutter continued to swim around in the back of my mind for many years until I considered it slightly differently recently when someone once again asked me why it is that I am so calm and composed during moments when others are literally overwhelmed or panicked.

    My usual response was to dismiss it and smile while telling myself that I’m incapable of feeling such emotion, but that uncomfortable feeling in my gut kept nagging at me because I knew it wasn’t true. I am probably more emotionally sensitised than most people I’ll ever meet. (Note I said sensitised, not sensitive!). However, my innate focus on wanting to emerge from trials rather than how to cope causes me to look behind the emotion and focus on the steps needed to overcome it instead. In doing so, it’s inevitable that I got accused of being insensitive because most people look for sympathy rather than guidance when they’re down and out. I think it validates our weakness when we receive sympathy, while tough love reminds us that we’re being pitiful instead of bold. Victims versus masters. Scarcity mentality versus abundance mentality. They all talk about the same thing. You either want to prevail, or you want to be admired for having persevered when others would understand if you failed.

    It’s that unhealthy need to be recognised for our strength in our struggles that often leaves us rooted in our struggles rather than motivating us to overcome it. We find comfort in knowing that others know how much we’re hurting because there’s a natural embrace of compassion or sympathy that often accompanies such visibility. That embrace is often from those that are equally or more weak than we are because they draw comfort from being able to comfort others that are similarly afflicted. This must all sound so cold and dismissive, but it’s not intended that way. I’ll say it again. Sympathy has only ever made someone feel better about being in the state they’re in, while tough love is what pushes them to move forward. Soliciting sympathy in times of weakness is the poison we don’t need.

    That’s when I realised the value of being sensitised rather than sensitive. The value of reflection rather than expression. Reflection allowed me to observe what lessons I had learned from past experiences, and what markers were associated with them, while my outbursts, my anger, and my need to make others understand how bad my state was so that they could empathise with me only ever served as a distraction from moving forward and letting go of the past. That’s when I started looking for the tell-tale signs in others relative to what I witnessed in myself when I went through similar experiences, and the more I identified it, the more I was able to accurately interpret what they were experiencing, why they were experiencing it, and what they were contemplating in dealing with it. Not because I knew them well, but because I knew myself well. And that’s how I started consciously reverse engineering my own life experiences with the aim of understanding the trials and struggles of the people around me.

    So when we’re told we see our faults in others, we need to go beyond just understanding that it implies that every finger pointed at someone else means there are several more fingers pointing at ourselves. This is more valuable and important than that. If we go beyond the rhetoric and the vilification, we’ll see that every struggle of ours is in fact a resource to alleviate the struggles of others. It’s not the sympathy that matters most, but the compassion coupled with the resolve to raise them out of the depths of despair that we once experienced that will add more value than any amount of sympathy ever could.

    However, the irony of helping others out of the dark spaces in their lives is that when they emerge, they’re often inclined to avoid you because you remind them of a time when they were weak. Most people think such weakness is deplorable, they are the ones that remain weak. It is only the grateful that see their moments of weakness as being the source of their strength. They are the ones you should surround yourself with because they will offer the hand of compassion concealed in a glove of tough love when the ingrates will revel in your weakness because it makes them feel better about their own pathetic selves. On that note, don’t expect to be surrounded by too many people at all, because a cursory look around you will reveal that this world is overcome with ingrates who are obsessed with what is in it for them, rather than considering what they need to contribute instead. Incidentally this brings to mind another thought that occurred to me this week. That is, sincerity is rarely reflected at the moment of giving, but most often reflected in the behaviour that follows. And so we should be careful of seeing those that sympathise with us as being sincere, because very often they are the ones that accuse us of thinking that we’re better than them when we let go of what held us back, just because they’re still holding on to it in their own lives.

    (This was a particularly challenging post to write, for reasons that I have yet to figure out!)

  • Mother’s Day – An Awkward Moment

    I’ve been tempted to ask a few people the kind of question that is often dismissed as being ridiculous or unrealistic. But it’s really a simple question that goes something like this. Apart from Anniversaries, Birthdays, and days like Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, do you believe that you acknowledge or celebrate the contribution of your parents, or other loved ones, sufficiently in your life? If yes, you don’t need to commemorate Mother’s Day, or any of those other occasions. If no, then those occasions are desperately needed reminders for you, and you’re probably a contributor towards the reasons for having a need to set aside a specific day to acknowledge these people in our lives.

    I still maintain that living life by predetermined occasions intended to celebrate the contribution of individuals, or even just to acknowledge them is a waste of life and a lie to pacify our own inefficiencies. We can speak idealistically of acknowledging and affirming significant others, but when we wait for the occasion of a birthday or similar event to express such appreciation, then we easily fall prey to the act becoming a ritual rather than a sincere effort. Worse than this, we assume that the person will live long enough for us to acknowledge them when that occasion arrives, because acknowledging them as and when we feel inclined to do so naturally seems to be too burdensome.

    I’ve previously expressed my distaste for celebrating birthdays, and similarly, I also spurn the celebration of such token occasions because it encourages the mindset of ‘take for granted now because we can always make up for it later’. Mothers, fathers, and significant others, including our children, must not be conditioned to only expect to receive affirmation or gratitude from us on specific occasions. Nor should they be conditioned to believe that it’s only expected of them to reciprocate in the same way either. Talking about the celebration of life must not just be a romantic notion or an ideal, but instead it should be something that we practice with conviction.

    There’s enough tokenism in this world which feeds the cycle of insincerity that plagues almost every human interaction these days. Find a reason to celebrate the people in your life at times when they least expect it. Don’t wait for special occasions. Life is too fragile to take it for granted by assuming that tomorrow will be another day for us to do what we should have done today. But this is not about procrastination. It’s about gratitude. True gratitude is not guided by superficial occasions that celebrate milestones that are meaningless. We’ve placed so much emphasis on the occasions, that we’ve forgotten what the true celebration is about.

    Occasions like these have only ever served to appease the conscience of those that fail to celebrate the significant others in their lives the rest of the year. This becomes ever more evident when our parents grow old, which usually coincides with the prime of our lives, at which point the sick mindset sets in that suggests that they had their turn, so now it’s ours, and they should be able to understand that.

    The lethargy of society in giving back is a constant source of disillusionment. We’ve taken consumerism and made it an inherent part of our personal relationships as well. I pray that it changes. More than this, I pray that the majority of people that read this post will disagree with me about showing affection, appreciation, or affirmation to their loved ones on predetermined occasions only.

  • I think we use people that are inconsequential in our lives, but abuse people that are important to us. It’s easier to take for granted someone that’s close to us, than it is to take a stranger or an acquaintance for granted because there has to be an expectation of consistency and reliability before you can take someone for granted. Hence abusing those close to us.

    However, I’ve often thought that taking someone for granted can be construed as a compliment. But such a compliment is wasted and justifiably unappreciated if it is never balanced with due care and consideration as well. 　

  • When people pull their face at the thought of picking up a crumb or a morsel of food that fell to the floor to clean it and eat it, I immediately see this picture in my mind. When yesterday’s left overs leave me feeling frustrated at the thought of having the same meal again, this photo creeps into my head. And worse still, when obese people plunge food down their throats in gluttonous volumes, and discard what they couldn’t finish because they reached the point of nausea, I think of this child.

    This child would probably develop the most beautifully calming smile, with excitement in his eyes, and gratitude in every breath if he were just allowed to share in the crumbs and left overs that so many of us discard out of embarrassment or extravagance, or greed and ingratitude. We’ve become too high class to eat crumbs off the floor, or to save left overs for later unless the left overs are from a distinctly extravagant or indulgent dish.

    There are times when the world leaves me feeling sick to my gut, and disillusioned at their fickle frailties. This is one of those times.

  • Significance

    In my search for significance, I’ve realised that I always come up short. It’s a double-edged sword with a poisoned tip. The very fact that I feel a need to seek significance is damaging to my sense of self, since significance is not something that can be earned. It’s given. 

    There are so many times that I’ve seen huge sacrifices made by some on behalf of others, but the one making the effort often ends up insignificant and taken for granted anyway. Unless there is an inclination on the part of the recipient to express gratitude or elevate the significance of the giver, it remains a fool’s endeavour. 

    The poisoned tip is the realisation that I’m inconsequential to the state of happiness of those I covet for significance which is why I need to seek this significance in the first place.

    My ingratitude probably distracts me from the realisation of the significance that I do hold in the lives of those around me, because I’m so busy searching for it in one that I wish to be significant in my life. There’s that vicious cycle again.

  • Gratitude is not simply a state of mind

    Gratitude is not simply a state of mind, but rather a state of being. Appreciating someone but restraining yourself from openly expressing it, verbally or otherwise, is of no use to them, and only sows the seeds of selfishness in your own heart. True appreciation would result in a willingness to acknowledge the impact that someone else’s efforts or contribution has on your life. Anything less cannot be appreciation. If we are willing to consume, then we must also be willing to contribute as well. Otherwise we introduce an imbalance in our lives that can never lead to healthy relationships. Don’t let your fear of allowing significant others into your personal space result in the destruction of beauty in your life.

    As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.

    John F. Kennedy

  • A Wasted Life

    A wasted life, for me, is not about not being able to influence others, or not changing the world…it’s a life spent not feeling truly appreciated. I could do whatever the hell I please, with the intensity of passion that escapes most, and with the insight and wisdom that could silence the sages…but if I don’t feel appreciated in the process, it would amount to sweet nothing for me…whether or not others take from it and enrich their lives in the process will do nothing for the void in mine if the appreciation that I need is never felt. That would be a wasted life for me…and this is why so often my life feels wasted…desolate…empty…bare…