Long time ago, I noticed this quote on a magazine. It’s the first time I heard of this quote somewhere even though I can’t really understand the implicit meaning behind this sentence at that time. With the time went by, from time to time this quote emerged in my mind all of a sudden.
If you met a good thing, you’ll be happy; on the contrary, you’ll be melancholy and angry. It’s so natural that you wouldn’t have any doubt on that. In the days I fulfilled my mandatory military service, the other day, I failed my final qualification on being a paratrooper. It’s a terribly bad news for I had been expecting to be one part of them so long. One of my camarades in the training camp (we had been together from the time we were still in recruit training center) said“From now on, I decided to be optimistic and glad to face everyday after we got scrubbed from the qualified list. I choose to be happy instead to be depressed”. “How could it be, are you kidding me?” I murmured in my mind at that time. From then on, I still felt very gloomy and unhopeful to accept that shameful and unpleasant result. I just couldn’t render my emotion positive at the moment. This unpleasant feeling accompanied with me for a long time going together with my switch to another artillery brigade in the military until I finished my military service. And still sometimes it’s like a little monster prowling in my heart, and appeared on occasion, when it reminds me.
After that, for granted, I can’t avoid encountering unpleasant things in life no matter those in work, relationship and every aspect of my life. However, it seems now easy to deal with the bad emotion and render bad experience unimportant after you have experienced such a catastrophic depression in your life. I gradually understood the first part of this quote. Basically, after a while of being shocked by“bad things”, everybody are able to become happy under any circumstances. It needs a kind of skill, and of course, people are not inherent to have this skill relating to how you deem your “bad things” happened in your life. It’s definitely a skill to give the objective value on everything arose in your life rather than judge it only by the superficial facts at your first glance. Every single event is neutral, note that it’s you who give the positive or negative meaning on it. If you looked at that event after enough period of time letting you can almost get rid of the unhappy atmosphere in your heart, would you still judge that event a complete useless and terrible experience? Or you also got something precious for you just because of your preceded failure even felt lucky to be in this failure. Life is not always a simply straight road, so, once again, when you were forced reluctantly to be on another unexpected way. Please keep yourself energetic and fling yourself into what you do at the moment. Most importantly, choose happiness skillfully to continue on your new journey.
Have you ever been in a situation that a person walking in front of you unaware of her cash or credit card dropped on the ground. Would you notice her immediately or just go past even pick it up when nobody puts attention on you? When you are alone, would you still choose kindness instead of selfishness. As I grew up, I found that knowing what to do always not equal to doing what should do. Everyone knows what is kindness, what is honesty, what is generosity, yet when it comes to personal interest, making a kind choice becomes a difficult thing. In my point of view, every moment in your life from the morning to the evening, from the dawn to the dusk, you are going to make a decision no matter it’s a big or tiny one. You may choose to donate your money to the orphanages or to eat a luxury buffet. You may choose to bring your personal sustainable tableware or using disposable ones. You may choose to listen to your friend sitting in front of you intently or to immerse in your smartphone games. You may choose to do some household chores for your family or just to sneak in your room quickly after dinner. You may choose to refuse to be bribed or get the money and harm your people your country. Every tiny choice you made forms your personality; furthermore, it influenced people around you. If you have enough abilities and knowledge to do a favor to the society and environment you belong to, why this time you don’t choose the way likely to need some efforts, yet does benefit on place you live in and the people you care. Your efforts are powerful enough to affect people around, and influence their behavior, too. Changes happened among people. Finally, like a snowball, it grows when rolling becoming a overwhelming tendency and social common ground.
From my point of view, understanding this quote is very useful in my life so I would like to share my perspective here. It is a kind of guideline when I met things unpleasant or hard to make a decision. It gives a possibility that you are able to free yourself from emotions by changing the distance and width you stand on when interpreting an unhappy event. It gives a future that you will choose the way do benefiting yourself long-term.
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