For the longest time, I was a very binary person as far as the world of right and wrong was concerned. I am not
sure if this is because I am an INFJ by personality type or because I devoured
Enid Blyton literature more than food during my formative years….but as far as
I was concerned, things were either right or wrong, black and white and there was nothing in
between. This thought process was so
deeply embedded that I never even considered that one man’s meat could be another’s
poison.
Then I left home, and my horizons widened greatly. I made
some really close friends who sometimes did certain things, which in the world
of old me would have been the blackest of black deeds. However, I knew them in
and out, and I knew what led them to doing some of these things. I knew that
they were fantastic people who got carried away and made a mistake. And
gradually, a new thought process started to develop. Everyone is human and no
one is infallible. No one ever starts off wanting to break the “moral code” out
of pleasure...it just happens and one gets so swept away out of
necessity/emotion/insecurity, that one doesn’t realise one has overstepped
his/her boundaries until it is too late to turn back.
Spending time with myself also gave me a lot of
opportunities for self-introspection. I gradually started to recall a lot of
things that I had done gravely wrong, a lot of people whom I had hurt deeply.
Had I been a dispassionate observer, I probably would have been the first to
condemn the behavior…but I was the wrong doer this time round. Who was I then
to judge people or adopt a holier than thou attitude?
I am not saying that hurting others or acting purely in
one’s own interests is acceptable. However, it is sometimes important to get the
full picture, to understand the reason behind a person’s actions before
condemning him/her. We hated Severus Snape for six books, until we realized
that all his actions were those of a man who loved deeply and had been
misunderstood. We thought Louis Litt was an insecure, jealous creature until
season 5, when we understand what caused him to be this way.
Life is too short for grudges, pain and hatred. Why spend
our lives judging or criticizing people when we can spend it laughing, loving
and dreaming? If someone doesn’t live up
to your expectations, distance yourself and move on…invest your energies in
those that do. And recall those whose expectations you didn’t live up to…it
will make forgiving the people that hurt you much easier.
Life isn’t the amalgamation of vacation selfies, high end
cuisine and impressive job titles that our social networks would have us
believe. Each and every one is fighting some battle or the other…so smile and
be nice..it wont make the battles go away, but it will give you the energy and
grace to win the battles with your head held high!
