1038. Half Empty or Half Full.....!

Every person in the world has experienced the ups and downs of life. Life is a roller-coaster ride and at every given stage he is provided with valuable lessons whether he takes it or not.

We are learning valuable lessons not by the setback alone but by the influence it has over our life and the ability to react to the negative situation. It is indeed very difficult to make a negative experience into something more positive and helpful. In fact it seems so since some of the most catastrophic moments in our life never end if it starts happening. However, there is always a way to take a worst situation and extract something positive from it.

The most important mantra is to think that the catastrophic moment is not here to stay “This too will pass on.” And some people believe that everything happens for a reason. While some may not buy that philosophy, we can at least give each experience a purpose and try to learn from that experience. There is no hard and fast rule that a good experience is the one that can give us lessons for life.

There is a story of two brothers. The elder brother was a drunker who frequently quarreled with his wife. The younger one was a businessman who was respected in society and had a wonderful family. The neighbours were very eager to know how the two brothers of the same parents, brought up in the same environment, could be so different.

The elder one was asked, “How come you are living your life like this? You drink a lot have frequent quarrel with your wife and children. What is the reason?”

He said, “My father was an alcoholic he would come home late night and beat my mother. What can you expect if one is brought up in such an environment? That is what I am.”

They went to the younger brother asked him the same question. “How come you are successful in life and doing everything right? Who is the source of your motivation?”

And guess what he said???

“My father, when I was a little boy I used to see my father come home drunk and beat my mother. That was the time I made up my mind, when I grow up I would not be like him.”

Here both were deriving their strength and motivation from the same source, but one was using it positively and the other negatively. Negative motivation brings the desire to take the easier way which ends up being the tougher way. If we seriously think we will know that there were many such avenues of learning we missed everyday by looking at the trouble with a negative viewpoint. Every experience whether it is good or bad should be actually a learning experience. A wise person looks for the lesson in every experience, failure, victory and challenge so he can learn from it and choose to do more of the same if it is laudable or make adjustments to create a desirable outcome if it is dreadful.

If there are important lessons to be learnt from Pandavas as to how one has to live, there are lessons too from Kauravas how not to.