Life is made up of chains of events. Some are small and some are big. The end of one event marks the beginning of another. Some are good, some not so good. You want some to go on forever, some you wish they were over as soon as they started. Some take you downwards, some take you upwards and some simply leave you where you are. Some, you bring to yourself and other people bring some to you. Every event, no matter the form or shape, brings you a new experience. The experience, whether bad or good, should teach you something about yourself or about others. Each event forms part of one continuous flow of your journey on earth. One event leads to another.
Think of a past event. What was the size? Was it a small or big event? How long did it last? One second? One minute? One hour? One day? One week? One month? Or even one year? For example an event could be that you had an argument with someone at a bus one Monday morning and the person slapped you in the face and this caused you severe pain.
The moment the person slapped you cannot be reversed back. It was an event you will live with for the rest of your life. Once the event took place, you have no control over it. What you could control was the way you reacted to the slap. Perhaps you slapped the person back. Perhaps you ignored the person and walked away. If you retaliated, perhaps, it could lead you to other events the end of you could predict. If you ignored it and walked away, you could put yourself in a strong position to control any subsequent events. One of the events that could follow would be the feeling pain. This is both physical and emotional. The duration of the pain would depend on a number of factors. The most important being your ability to isolate your ego from the incident, put it into context and establish a meaning for what had happened.
The longer the time you spend thinking about the incident, the longer the time you will spend feeling the pain. Sometime, even when the physical pain has long gone, but the emotional pain you get from thinking about the incident remains for as long you keep thinking about it. The way some people deal with such situation is not to pretend that the incident did not happen. They accept what had happened. Each time they think about it, they allow the thinking to flow. When they are feeling bad about it, they allow the moments of bad feelings to flow and pass over them. They do not resist it as they know it just a flow. They see it just like the flow of a river. If they try to stop it, it will find another route to flow on. Sometimes, the period of its flow may be very short. At another time it may be long. The most important thing is that they do not fight it. They just live with it as part of living their lives by the moments. They experience the feeling of pain in the same calmness as they experience the feeling of joy.
The secret of having a sustainable happy and self-fulfilling life is learning to understand the relationships between times and events and their fluidity. When you know and understand that nothing is permanent, you will develop the ability to manage each event in your life over the period it takes to flow into and away from you. Take the case of the pain as an example. You might say you knew what caused it. The slap of course, you will say. Others would say that was the immediate cause. This implies that there is a remote cause. Perhaps, you would not have met the person who slapped you at the time and place if you had left your bed at your usual time in the morning. What made you to leave home that morning ten minutes earlier than usual? Perhaps you could not sleep because of an unresolved issue with your partner. The thoughts of the issue occupied your mind throughout the night. Therefore you woke up earlier than usual and decided to head to your office. What is this unresolved issue? What caused it? If you look further and further backward, you will begin to notice the interconnectedness of all the small and big events that have led to the event at the bus stop. They are all linked like chains. Each chain represents an event. One chain can connect the other chain in three ways; upwards, downwards or straight-ward. In order words, it can be connected positively, negatively or neutrally. The choice of what you want the connection to be is largely in your control.
Sometimes, simply saying “I’m sorry”, to your partner is all you probably need to break the chain of events and move the next event towards another direction. Some people see apology as a sign of weakness. To some people, receiving apology is a sign that the other person has surrendered and accepted guilt. This is a win/lose mentality. This mindset does not lead to sustainable change of attitude. To other people giving apology is a sign of strength. This is a win/win mentality which can lead to making a sustainable attitude change.
Think of what your life would feel like if only you could determine how you want to react to every event that flows into your life over time. Think of what difference you could make in the life of others if you could decide how to respond to events flowing all around you over time. Think of how you will react to the next even in your flow of life. Will you react positively, negatively or neutrally? Just think proactively how you will be reacting to the next event in your life. You will become a keen observer of every event that flow into your life. You will learn to watch them as they pass through you and move away from you as part of the continuous flow of your life over time and space.
Finally let me leave you with the following quote by the Greek philosopher, Epictetus: “Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life”.
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