Hindsight is 20/20
Steve Jobs once said you can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only see how all the dots are connected when you look backward.
How true!
Connecting the dots is not always fun as we did in childhood. Back then it revealed a beautiful whale or a bus. And when we do it now, with the incidents that have flashed by, we only reveal an emotion of self-hatred, unluckiness, self-blame, assumptions, criticism. Isn’t it? Or is it so?
More often than not, we are either bombarded with a flash of happenings that sew together or apparently our minds work wonders to correlate each incident. And when that happens, there’s a multitude of combinations possible — we are more likely to believe that’s a right thing to do and end up in the blame game. If not, we start to believe that the universe is conspiring against us. Or, on the brighter side, we tend to nurture the civilized human inside to brush the thought aside. With all of these,
We believe or do we assume?
Making assumptions about another person is like saying, “Guilty until proven innocent”.
As the blog by Sunshyne narrates, the cost of assumption is very high. We make assumptions about what others are thinking or the meaning behind their words and actions. And certainly, others make assumptions about us every day. Have you ever been on the receiving end of wrong assumptions? It’s the worst feeling. It’s like being stuck between a rock and a hard place. I would be willing to bet we are on both sides of assuming…
Our brains are actually wired to fill in the gaps. This means, when we don’t have all the information, we draw conclusions. Drawing conclusions means we’re judging. We base conclusions on previous experiences, tangible information and feelings/emotions. This all seems logical, so what’s the problem? We’re drawing conclusions without proof. We’re drawing conclusions without facts. Then we react based on our assumptions.
Half the problem subsides when we realize that our assumption is baseless.
I learned the hard way that one problem isn’t related to the other. I used to be frustrated over family issues or even trivial, things like realizing about a forgotten textbook moments after stepping into school, a cascaded bag while cycling and much more things that tense us up for a day.
Does it even make sense to think that one led to another?
The bag has slipped from the carrier 7/10 times and it’s probably time for me to change the way I secure it or replace the carrier.
I’ve forgotten textbook ‘n’ times, out of which, a few times, I’ve had a great escapade. Or to quote the worst day, had to skip an exam.
Things happen. And they don’t have to be connected. Bad day? Really?
There’s a connection may be. A peek-a-boo pattern like — fighting parents, discouraging husband, or maybe, if there’s a habit that always makes you unpunctual — waking up late, keeping things messy? And to more..
And that is where we need to learn to accept & accept to change.
Learn to accept what we can & cannot change.
Accept that we cannot change everything.
And, Change what we can — to something better.
All that needs understanding is that we cannot solve every problem that we hold. Sometimes letting it dust is a better way than to rustle it up. Accepting that something that can’t be changed, is better to always fight it up on the mind.
As long as we fight something that we can’t accept in our mind battle, we are only making ourselves bitter — frustrated, agitated. If we do find someone angry on some random day, we understand that probably he’s having a rough day. And what if that is the appropriate adjective we hold for that person? Ill-tempered. Probably, fighting the battle, the person has developed a character for himself which is hard to get out. Don’t let situations ruin the emotional intelligence in you. So now there’s a connecting dot.
Agreed to the fact that there are quotes which motivate us to keep battling until there’s a way out. But not always there’s a way.
Failed exams. Loss of a loved one. Divorce. Bad accident.
You are not the only one. Everyone needs to endure what’s bestowed on them. And there’s no choice when it comes to the extremes of life. What’s done is done, it’s how we cope with the next steps of life.
Any of the above is not going to be easy. Being vulnerable will hurt and as long as the wound is fresh, it will hurt more.
And, it’s okay that you are in pain. Its okay, things happened this way. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to move on. It’s okay.
