Out of the thousands of
books I’ve read, one that I thoroughly enjoyed is ‘who moved my cheese’ by
Spencer Johnson, I read it a few years ago during a training I attended, and
though I learnt some lessons, I can say authoritatively that there are some
things theory won’t teach you until you experience and learn first-hand.
My cheese has been moved
a few times, to be honest I’ve woken up before and found that the whole station
has been moved or demolished; what is so sad is that there were some instances
when I saw this coming but I didn’t trust myself enough to make the right
choice or I was too lazy or afraid of the unknown. I used to say ‘impatience’
when someone asked me to mention a character flaw/something about me I could
change; and over time in an attempt to not be an impatient person I had become
fearful and often accommodated or adapted to situations that though I knew were
wrong, I’d tell myself to calm down and ‘learn lessons’, ‘live through it and
come out stronger’, ‘put in more effort’, blah blah blah!
I looked back few years of my life and realized I had often
accepted much less than I deserved; not because I have a heightened sense of my
own importance but because I now have a better knowledge of who I am and can be.
I also recognize that I got too comfortable when the ‘cheese’ seemed sufficient
so I was often left frustrated at every slight change or disruption in my
routine
And in extreme cases when ‘the rug gets pulled from under you’ it is not pretty; you blame the
whole world including your dead ancestors and haters, you give excuses and cook
up all sorts of stories about how unlucky you are, it just so happens that this period you run into old friends from school who seem to have the
perfect life while you 'Mr/Miss most likely to succeed’ is living to make ends
meet and you fall in and out of depression and self-condemnation and how life
is unfair.
……..I’m glad I can laugh
and write about this now, because I’ve learnt the importance of teaching your
rug to fly or at least being able to roll it up and run with it to the next
point; we won’t always have control of things that happen to us but we can
learn to control how we react to those things which at the end makes us better.
None of us have been promised The Perfect Life but rather than sulk at every
misfortune and be static, I am willing to be better; to get up and act when I
need to and not sit down in anger or throwing pity parties.
** the image is of
calvin and hobbes on their imaginary magic carpet; the dialogue is funny but made
me think about how some people can still be hung on certain issues even after
they have been blessed with the chance to move on
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