every experience develops some latent force within you, you
will grow vigorous and happy, however adverse
your circumstances may seem to be.
-John Heywood
I think that it's far too easy to get caught up in our troubles. It seems that we somehow get so caught up in what we see as the negative aspects of our problems that we don't even see that they can be some of the most important elements of our lives. They're the things that most help us to grow and to learn; they are what allows us to become stronger and more compassionate people. Without problems and troubles, our lives would be very bland, it seems, and we would often find ourselves without a sense of direction, without a sense of purpose.
If we could get in the habit of calling all of our experiences just that--experiences--then I think we could avoid many of the problems our own minds cause us. When we see something as a problem, we give it a lot of power over us. We allow it to diminish much of our energy, especially when we see it as a major problem. We allow it to cause us a great deal of worry, and we may even lose sleep or start behaving differently when we're dealing with such experiences. We fear that they will overwhelm us, that we'll end up having nothing, losing everything that we have or all that we've worked for.
As with so many other things, though, this is mostly a matter of perspective. Perhaps the issue that just came up does have a drastic side to it; perhaps it can mean that we'll lose a job or a relationship or a place to live. Experience tells us, though, that sometimes losing what we have is the absolute best thing for us--we lose a relationship because there's someone else who's going to come along who is much better for us; we lose a job because there's a job out there waiting for us that's much, much better than the job we have now.
I think that in my life, the worst part of focusing on troubles rather than experiences has been the amount of time I've lost to worry and depression and fear. There have been many hours that I could have enjoyed, that could have been rich and fulfilling rather than miserable. And I realize in retrospect that most of the time, I was making myself miserable by the ways that I reacted to troubles. They weren't making me miserable; I was.
And all these lost hours, too, I chalk up to experience because I know that I lose far fewer hours now because I learned many valuable lessons from the time I caused myself to "lose."
What kinds of experiences are you facing and having now? How are you responding to them? Are you giving them power over you by making them stronger than they really are? Or are you learning from them, trying to become a better person with the help of the things that life is throwing your way? It's very important that we keep in mind that when we see our trials as experience, we know that we can learn and grow from them. We are always given the chances to become better people, but often we refuse to see the best learning experiences because we see them more as threats than as teachers. It's time to allow our minds to help us, to let us learn from experience so that our lives will be richer and fuller.
As Rainer Maria Rilke once said, "Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses, only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave."
http://livinglifefully.com/experience.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment