Whenever we revisit the past, we must make sure to enjoy the good moments as much as we scrutinize our bad moments. It’s easy to spend time scrutinizing every mistake you’ve ever made – who else besides us knows every mistake we’ve ever made? But for some reason, it’s so easy to forget the things we do correctly: the good decisions. The decisions where present-day you would be proud of younger you for making that choice. Most of us (when invited) would easily celebrate the victory of a good friend or someone else we care about, but why do we forget to celebrate our victories as greatly as we scrutinize our pain? Perhaps we’ve contlditioned to look for the faults in others, instead of improving ourselves, because the former is much easier than the latter – judging others is easy, yet changing ourselves requires a lot of failure, pain and introspection. Is there a painless way to learn? No. Pain is an integral part of the human experience. Suffering however is optional. What we choose to do with the pain is what ultimately transforms us into the person we want to become. We’ve learned to become who we are from the pain of our mistakes. Pain is guaranteed, but suffering is optional.
Pain is Guaranteed, but Suffering is Optional
Published by Jay-Ram
Hello. My name is Jay-Ram (Jay-ROM) and I'm a Indian-American former pharmaceutical chemist. Ever since I was a child, I've had a fascination with science, watching shows like "Bill-Nye The Science Guy" and "The Magic School Bus." I often had felt like the odd-kid-out because of the different way I would find solutions to problems (usually breaking conventional norms) and this made me stand out from my peers as the weird one. Now that I've worked in the industry for a while and realised my dream of working in a lab, I have come to understand that the spirit of science that drew me to it exists beyond the laboratory walls; it lead me to a way to connect people. So to explore that, I want to help people realize that they are not separate from the universe, but a part of it, itself. Paraphrasing the great Alan Watts, my goal with writing is the following: to help us realize that even though we feel as separate waves, we are still part of the entire cosmic ocean. View all posts by Jay-Ram
MAN I realized that I try to avoid pain so much to the point that I’m obviously holding myself back from growing. Thank you for your powerful post again!
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