Here are 3 important things, which I learned, accepted and realised over the past few months:
1. Reality is truly infinite (meaning: endless, unpredictable AND unrepeatable) and we try, in vain, to make sense out of it with a finite tool, our mind.
In that sense, and accepting the truth of that statement, the best thing you can do is live, experience, go through the manifold events of your life, without reflecting (at least, not too much) upon them.
That doesn’t equate - let us be certain about it - to deactivating your mind; you can still, and ought to, use it for dealing with all the necessary (and unavoidable) practical matters of your day-to-day life.
But, I believe, it means that the ideal is that you should not try to interpret any event of your life – again: leaving aside any / all of their practical dimensions – and try to draw a big picture (or pattern) out of A N Y T H I N G that happens to you.
Instead, you should focus on living / experiencing all events of your life viscerally, without any mental filter, even T H O U G H T L E S S L Y, if you are not afraid (I am not) of this particular word.
2. You cannot escape from what you have to do and what you want to do (which is, ultimately, one and the same thing); it is more certain that you will behave in a given way and certain things are going to happen to you than the day coming after the night (AND THIS IS NOT FATALISTIC).
If you don’t believe me, just try to sit down doing nothing.
You will see that after a while, your innate tendencies (mental and behavioural, alike) will take you all but over and will surely direct you to act one way or another.
And there is nothing you can do about it; in fact, the things which you are “pushed” to do are things that you, yourself, given the particular way you have grown up and formed your character and preferences, WANT, very much so, to do!
In this sense, could one (you, that is) really differentiate between free will and fate?
The answer is that, at the end of the day, the two are so intertwined within you (as we just, very briefly, saw), that you truly cannot say which is which; from different, but equally valid, lookout points, they fully coincide!
3. It might be OK and understandable to worry about the present and the future (at least, for a while, and to a certain, not exaggerated extent), but it truly makes no sense at all to ruminate over the past (because, any past events of your life are really gone, and you absolutely cannot go back and change them, for a variety of reasons).
It’s as simple as that:
You cannot time-travel!
Even if you could, what you would go through wouldn’t be an «authentic» time travel experience.
Think about it:
The fact alone that you would experience a past event of your life with the knowledge that you gained BECAUSE of this particular past event or AFTER the event in question, would ALTER the event itself!
So, in this sense, you would live a COMPLETELY different experience, even if all other factors / facets / dimensions of the experience / event would be identical!
Therefore, one needs to acknowledge and accept it:
What is gone is gone!
For good.
Thus, it makes no sense, and it brings no value (to you or to anyone) to ruminate over any events of your past whatsoever!
Yes, you can learn from these past events, and, yes, you can apply that particular knowledge in similar future situations you are going to face.
But you cannot go back and undo ANYTHING from your past.
If you really grasp this (and most fellow human beings haven’t), you are sure to remove a HUUUGE source of stress from your life.
So, there you have it: 3 things that changed my life and, I truly hope, could and will change yours too!
What do you think about what you just read?