Calluses
“The nonpermanent appearance of happiness and distress, and their disappearance in due course, are like the appearance and disappearance of winter and summer seasons. They arise from sense perception,and one must learn to tolerate them without being disturbed.” ~ Lord Krishna, Bagavat Gita
Reading this quote is easy, but putting it into practice is the hard bit. It takes a lot of strength to stay emotionally stable during the stressful periods of our lives. However, it is not impossible. It takes a lot of reflection and self growth to overcome the impacts of the bad chapters of our lives. It takes time, patience and hard work, but it is feasible if we try hard enough.
I personally have always found that the problem solving attitude makes life a lot easier. Ofcourse I feel the emotions as they come, as I am human at the end of the day. However, I often tell myself that good and bad are like seasons, it won't stay like this forever, and force myself to get out of this pit. While it did help me persist through tough times, I did not find peace within myself until I realised one thing. I cannot build a true calluses to life unless I reflect on the bad, learn and grow from it. I can come up with all the short cuts and solutions but I would not get any wiser or stronger unless I cut off the root cause of my problems and understand how the problems arised in the first place. One thing that I realised is that many of our problems or even the way we perceive our problems arise within ourselves. Some things are exceptionally traumatic, this essay does not apply to them. I am talking about the day to day stressors such as relationship problems, financial troubles, work related difficulties, self esteem issues, stressful events in the family, obstacles in achieving goals and so on. These are the common stressors that often require self reflection, discipline and work to overcome.
Drowning in self pity is easy but it would actually make the stress worse and last longer. It is better to face the difficulty head on, learn from it, understand why it happened, and understand how to prevent it or minimise the effects of it in the future. Even after all this work life would still have rough days but knowing that you can persist and grow from it really helps to find peace within those bad times.
I saw this interesting Instagram post the other day. The man in the video was explaining the concept of karma. To those of you who are not familiar with the concept of karma, karma is the reaction to ones action. People often believe karma is a reward or punish system. However, the man explained that karma is simply a product of our actions or a reaction to our actions. It is there to teach us lessons so that we grow and get closer to enlightenment. Looking back at certain moments of my life and that video, gave me comfort. I started becoming more grateful for the bad moments of life, I infact started embracing these stressors. I now see it as a challenge to use these stressful events to my advantage so that I can be catapulted towards finding peace and happiness within myself even during sorrowful times. It made life look simpler. I truly started believing that everything happens for a reason.
Ofcourse I'm not perfect I have not become a monk. I however am less afraid of things going wrong in my life. I am more accepting of imperfections. I embrace mistakes (within moral means). I understand that I can gain good qualities and wisdom from setbacks. This is how I can form a callus to life.