Let the Original Emerge
The glory of life is in the chapters to come!
Like the icons on a desktop, we hold icons for every person in our head. Some icons represent good people, some wonderful people, some are not so good, some we cannot even stand, some the worst kind, and so on…
These icons serve as the spectacles through which we perceive people and accordingly interpret what they do and what they do not do. When he/she is a good person in our head, then even wrong from them is nullified and accepted. Whereas, when he/she is a bad person in our head, then even right from them is negated and overlooked. Essentially, whether they are good or bad in our head is completely different from actual reality. That’s why the same person is perceived as a devil by one and an angel by another. The person need not change; when the icon we hold for the person in our head changes, it changes the relationship completely.
How we process, perceive, and interpret the event, that becomes our experience. So, the same event becomes a different experience for different people, depending on how they process, perceive, and interpret it.
It is even more evident in the context of all the understandings that more than a problem, it is our reaction to the problem that hurts us most. More than the calamity, it is the fear of the calamity that hurts us more. “The way we see the problem is the problem”. If we see that it is a failure, it is a failure. Instead, if we see failure as a mere outcome with feedback, we can improve with every experience. Success has its share of lessons and so do failures. What failures can teach, success cannot; and what success can teach failures cannot.
Good times, bad times, and filtering times are all matters of perceptions. I can choose to perceive any event the way I want to. So progress and stagnation are just the results and effects of how we choose to process the events of our lives. After all, we are not dealing with reality, but only the perceived reality. We are not facing situations, but our interpretations of the situations. So, even God need not be a reality for me, as long as I can hold an icon of devotion, surrender, and faith for that perceived reality, it works in my favor.
It is not enough that you improve the quality of your communication with the world outside. It is even more important that you improve the quality of your communication with yourself. What you tell the world and what the world tells you makes a small difference to you. However, what you keep telling yourself makes all the difference to you. What happens to you is not in your control. But how you process what happens to you is completely in your control. And in controlling that, you control your whole life.
So, if everything about your life has to change, all you have to do is to change the icons you hold in your head and also control what you take in your head.
