Tag: thought

The Weight Of The Glass

A Wondering WandererLeave a comment

Hi all! So, I came across a wonderful post sometime back on Facebook, and thought would share the same with you today. Yes, it might seem strange, but social media does throw up some good gems sometimes! 😁

Here’s that post:

Source

Isn’t that just a wonderful observation?!

And put so well into words by the author! I probably can not do as well a job of it, but I just wanted to expand on that analogy a bit. When I first read that passage, it seemed pretty straight-forward. But when I thought about it a bit more, I realised there was more to it than that.

We carry so much of our past, our experiences, our hurt and anger everyday, and everywhere, with us. You would’ve guessed: all these are the “glass” in this metaphor.

But here’s the thing: It’s not just restricted to such negative things. I’d also include positive things like peoples’ expectations, our own dreams, the longing for things yet to do or achieve, etc. in the definition of that “glass”. Anything that is part of our psyche, our soul, that we think about regularly as we live our life, is contained in that “glass”. The key concept is “thought” – the “glass” is just a collection of thoughts.

Then because of any unfortunate things that have happened to us in the past – losing loved ones, making mistakes, getting accused of things we didn’t do, sometimes, just being unlucky – we feel let down by life. We feel injustice was done to us. We feel wronged. We have trouble coming to terms with it. This is the “weight” of the “glass” that we carry with us. 

But as before, there’s more to it than that. Even the positive things that I talked about earlier (expectations, hopes, longing) have a weight of their own! It might not seem like it, but somebody driven by the sole goal to achieve something in life, so much so that they become blind to everything else, also carries a weight in a way! When we pine for something so deeply that it hurts, we carry the weight of our longings too! Here, the key concept is “feeling” – the “weight” of the “glass” is how strongly we feel about our thoughts.

When the unknown author says that we become numb and paralyzed by the weight of the glass if we carry it too long, it’s clear how that would be the case when the glass is made up of our hurt, anger, disappointments, etc. The longer we hold on to these things, the heavier they become, until something has to break.

But this is also true when we feel too strongly about the other things – things like peoples’ expectations, our value in their eyes, things that we think we need to achieve to be happy, our so called “targets” in life.

Now, I’m not trying to say that we should let go of our dreams, that we stop working towards our goals, stop wishing for things. No. A life devoid of hopes, dreams, something to look forward to, wouldn’t be a life at all.

What I do want to say is, be aware of the weight of even these things.

Everyone knows that they shouldn’t hold on to anger, to regrets, etc. Whether we can let go of them is a different story, but at least, we know that these things are not good for us.

But the other things – the weight of the positives – is something we don’t realise generally. We live our lives chasing one thing after another, we begin identifying ourselves with our targets, as if they define us. They do not.

Every “glass” is different, as every human is different. But no matter what your glass is made of, good or bad, put it down, even if just for a short while, whenever it seems to be getting too heavy, before it becomes too late.

For more such posts, please follow Echoes In The Ether on Facebook, WordPress, or Medium.

Photo by Manki Kim on Unsplash

The Most Important Thing To Know

A Wondering Wanderer1 Comment

Recently, one thought has been popping up in my mind repeatedly. And it happens at all sorts of time – when driving, when walking, even when talking.

Not that I’m complaining though. In my somewhat routine life, I tend to forget a very important thing, maybe, even the most important thing. But I’m glad that these days, the thought has been staying fresh in my memory through repetition.

And that thought is:

Read More »

E. E. Cummings: The Hardest Challenge…

A Wondering WandererLeave a comment

I find this quote from E. E. Cummings to be very true.

We always have an opinion on everything. Even if a random person, whom we are meeting for the first time, were to appear in front of us, and ask for some advice, we would definitely have something for him (even though we may not give that advice to him out of politeness or political correctness, but our minds will definitely think of something for him).

This works the other way too. Everyone has some opinion about how we, ourselves, are, and how we ought to be. That includes how we talk, our body language, our sense of dressing, our lack of knowledge about something, etc. People always have something that they want to tell us.

And this is not always with of a sense of condescension or contempt. Sometimes, people genuinely want what’s best for us. Like your family or friends. They’ll share their knowledge or opinion in the hope that it will make us better, prevent us from making certain mistakes, etc.

But, irrespective of the intentions, the ultimate effect on a person is that everyone tries to make the person be somebody else, according to what they think is best. But as the person leading that life, one has their own idea about how to lead their own life.

The result is that one has to deal with too many opinions, some their own, and some from different people. These opinions are often in conflict with each other, and one may easily be confused as to which one to take into consideration, and which to ignore.

To whom do you listen? To yourself or to those around you? Who’s to say who will be right? When faced with a choice, say you are thinking of going for option #1, but everyone around you suggests you take option #2. And say, after a great deal of thinking over the options, considering the arguments that others made for option #2, you do end up going for option #2, who made that decision? Did you or did they?

And even if you do take option #1 (your own original choice), suppose that turns out wrong (everyone makes mistakes and wrong decisions sometime in life). When the next time you have to make a choice again, and when again, the others have certain opinions different from your own, whom do you listen to?

These are not easy questions to answer. To make decisions that are truly one’s “own”,  one needs a great level of self-awareness and courage.

Self-awareness, so that one can objectively decide what one’s own thoughts are, without getting them mixed up with the plethora of thoughts from others that one will, undoubtedly, be bombarded with.

And courage, because that’s what one needs to stick to one’s own convictions, even in the face of a 100 people telling them that they are wrong. And specially, when one has actually been wrong in the past. A mistake, in the past, in a totally different scenario, doesn’t mean that one will make another in the current scenario. But those other people won’t miss a beat in telling you that you were wrong before (when you hadn’t listened to them), and that you should listen to them now if you don’t want to be wrong again.

In such a complex mix, it is a real challenge, the hardest even, to maintain a clear vision of who you are. So, yes, I agree:

The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be somebody else.

– E. E. Cummings