And My Brother Said

Recently, I had to deal with a situation that is not the fun-est to deal with.

My brother, taught me two lessons.

1) Live your principles, but don't let them punish you
I value integrity. Anyone who tries to defend their integrity by standing by their principles, by having their actions congruent with their words would know the challenge in doing so. Usually it's the world against you, but nothing beats having you against yourself - when you find that you have conflicting principles, when you realise that your principles might need a change; but isn't that failing integrity?

And my brother said; "Why do you let your principles punish you?" He went on to explain that while it is important to stand by your principles rather than be too much of a 'lalang'. But, and here comes the big but, it should not impede you, should not be a prosecutor because circumstances change. With changing circumstances, comes the need to reappraise our principles, to check if we are truly living authentically by them. If we are, yes please go ahead. If we are not, do we hold on, or is it time to change? To him and the situation I was dealing with, my principles became a hindrance for me to move on, it created a sort of analysis paralysis by making me believe that I'm "stuck" with these thoughts. When one is stuck, one is focused on a tunnel of negativity, and it becomes difficult to see solutions other than those already available.

He reminded me that I am empowered by my life principles, but that does not mean they have power over me.

Which brings me to the next point;

2) Learn your lessons, don't let your lessons create you
We are all given lessons in life, much so after bad experiences. The thing about experiences though, is while they leave you with great learnings, they also create a pool of emotions associated with such experiences. And the pain of learning is a good teacher, yet it does not change its identity that it is ultimately a form of pain. Unfortunately, when similar circumstances arise, it is easy to associate with the learnings of our previous experiences AND the pain that comes with it. That pain, or other associated negative emotions can skew the learning to make us feel like we cannot risk making a mistake again. And my brother said; "Don't let these lessons create you before you create the learning"

Of course, it can be argued that if that were to happen, all these silent negative emotions may indicate that we have not properly moved on. However, like all life loops, these emotions probably arise because of this new circumstance and without this new circumstance, we would never have realised these silent emotions. Does that mean we've not moved on? I don't think so. I'll like to think that this is part of life's continuity. We don't learn one lesson, full-stop that's it. It continues to build into future experiences, to see how we can apply the lesson, and from there, transform the future experiences for future future experiences.

In other words, we always always have the chance to relearn and reframe. As long as we realise that we are the one learning the lessons, the lessons don't make us who we are anymore that how much we take heed of it. We are and beyond the lessons we learn, don't let lessons scare and paralyse us.

There were more than two, but these two hit the right spot. Thank you bro!

And, he's my younger brother, massive proudness can?