“We learn to walk by stumbling.” Bulgarian Proverb
“courage is not limited to the battlefield. The real tests of courage are much quieter. They are the inner tests, like enduring pain when the room is empty, or standing alone when you’re misunderstood.” Charles Swindoll
With the party over, are you left with the disappointment? It goes across the board regarding gifts, missed opportunities for chatting with a certain relative, and believing our feelings have been totally disregarded. When people gather together the scene is set for total confusion, chaos and misunderstandings. Our minds are thinking about who we want to talk to and what we need to say to someone and questions we want to ask. What happens is we never get the opportunity to discuss anything with the person we wanted to talk to. We forgot to ask our questions and we never received any answers because someone interrupted us. This might sound familiar.
Gifts are kind of like that. We may have been disappointed but I would venturethat others probably were unhappy with the gifts we gave. Some people grumble to the world which is a bad idea because the negativity bounces back at us. Other people expect a return and still others pretend they liked the gift and then give it away or regift it. The point is that we all have our disappointments. If we want to complain about it to others we are making it bigger than it needs to be and giving life to an unimportant issue.
Many of us who experience a happy situation go home and may not think about it again. The opposite is true when we have a problem we didn’t like. Sometimes we can’t let it go and yet that is what we need to do.Freeing ourselves from the negativity releases a burden and opens us up to happier and more positive things in life. Free will, allows us to search and concentrate on positive things rather than reviewing and remembering negative things.
If we created a tally list of pros and cons in the course of our day we would find the optimistic definitely outweigh the adverse. If they don’t then we need help in learning how to seek out and find the cheerful happenings in our life. People are not out to get us or hurt us. People do care but at times may be distracted. Gifts and advice is given according to another’s likes and desires. People are on the same journey as we are and might even be better at hiding their problems or tears.
It might be easy to talk about how awful and difficult it was for our child to suffer a broken leg. We would commisserate. It might not be as easy to talk about a child who is on drugs and about to enter a rehab clinic. We are human and we all suffer hurts and scars. We can complain about the effects of aging but many times out of embarrassment we won’t mention our husband or wife is having an affair or constantly flirting with younger women. The issues are limitless. To save our dignity we don’t divulge our deepest darkest secrets. If the truth was told there are more people who have shared a similar situation as ours than not.
Take all of this into account and understand why someone went to a store and bought an object based on what they liked instead of what we would have wanted. Comprehend the magnitude of swirling pressures another endures. Just because they let us down, I’d guess maybe they are trying to keep themselves upright at the moment so we need to give them a break.
We just don’t ever see the magnitude of the worries of another person which is why it is awesome to support another when we can. We have our own issues so simply accepting another as they are is actually helping them. People know if you are disappointed with them for some reasons. Don’t put that on someone and you have eased a tremendous amount of anxiety. The smiling faces and displays of bravado might also be a way someone hides true feelings. It can be an escape. It boils down to judgement. We all need to stop judging.
By bringing anger into a situation we have built the mountain which we must climb over rather than deal with the mole hill which is easier to cross. If it is all about feelings of love or hate then ask yourself this, do you love others? If you do then it is probably reciprocal. We receive what we are sending out. If others love us then they are not deliberately hurting us and to think otherwise is to cause us more hurt. We are choosing the hurt in many situations. Choose instead to reduce stress in your life. Give others a timeout and especially allow yourself a breather.
Focus on a time you caused another, unintentional pain, remember how sad it made you feel and how much you wanted the other person to grasp your difficulties. Remember and grant others the forgiveness you sought for yourself. It comes back on us. If we slam the door, prepare one day for it to likewise slam on us.
“To carry a grudge is like being stung to death by one bee.” William H. Walton
“Hope works in these ways: it looks for the good in people instead of harping on the worst; it discovers what can be done instead of grumbling about what cannot; it regards problems, large or small, as opportunities; it pushes ahead when it would be easy to quit; it “lights the candle” instead of “cursing the darkness.” Anonymous
