Monday, April 13, 2015

I am totally responsible for how I choose to live and, for who I am now.

We all choose to be the essence of who we are!

Instead of blaming my childhood for my problems and for who I am, I am grateful to my parents and caregivers for being the instruments of my learning. If I had a bad childhood, I am grateful that I learned compassion, empathy, courage and determination. If I had a good childhood, I must be grateful for the love and security I was given.

Some of us are given all our harshest lessons early in life. Others have to learn their hardest lessons later in life. And since I am in the school of life, the lessons do not stop. There are always lessons to learn. If I do not learn a lesson, that lesson is repeated over and over again, until I do learn, until I see the love behind the lesson, until I learn to adjust and change. If my childhood was less than perfect, I am grateful that my harshest lessons came early in life. I rather drive on the gravel road filled with stones and potholes when I am younger and get the wide, open freeway when I am older, than the other way around.

“I would never do that to someone else, so how could they have done that to me”. If I have ever said these words then I live by the law of “Do unto others as I would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12) and I have been hurt by someone else. I expected someone to behave in a certain way and when they did not I was disappointed, disillusioned or had my heart broken.

I do not expect everyone to live by my rules. I never expect anything from anyone: this way I cannot be disappointed and could very well be impressed. Not everyone lives according to the same rules. If we all lived by the same rules, there would not be strife in the world and we probably would not even get angry or cross. The only time I get angry with someone is when they break a rule that I have internalized myself. The reason I get angry when someone jumps a stop street is because I have accepted and internalized the rule that I stop at a stop street. The stop street jumper has not internalized that rule. He does not know that I have made stopping at a stop street my rule and therefore is astonished that I should be angry with him.

The rules that I have been taught, accepted, internalized and live by will be different to the rules that others live by. We have all been brought up in different environments and therefore, our learning would be different.

Look at a game as an analogy of life. On this life field there are those who play according to soccer rules, and those who play according to rugby rules. Unless everyone plays by the same rules, there are bound to be losers and people are bound to get hurt and angry. Perhaps my mother played by the rules that her parents taught her while my father played by the rules that the boarding school taught him and I was trying to play by the rules that my Sunday school taught me. In such a situation, there is bound to be a victim or two.

Whether I accept and play the role of victim is entirely up to me. I may not have been responsible for the situation that I found myself in as a child, but I am totally responsible for how I choose to live and, for who I am now.