Chasing Misery

Scrolling through YouTube I often come across videos which I know will trigger me. What do I do? I click on it, I can’t help it, the little devil inside me makes me do it. The video lasts for ten minutes, and I spend the next ten in a mental argument against the person in the video. I catch myself doing the same thing every few days if not every day. Though it might change form, it might be an argument with one of my past teachers, reading books which bore me to tears or arguing with myself about my actions. They are all the same, I am chasing misery and pain in all of them, not because I like feeling frustrated or being unhappy, but because…umm, actually I don’t know why I do it.

Noticing this pattern of behavior in myself led me to notice it in others. I realized that though we all claim that we want happiness and joy, we are all busy chasing the opposite of it and either feed ourselves with justifications or turn a blind eye to it. Its funny how we chase all those negative emotions, but have trouble embracing the pain that comes with accepting that we went wrong and that our actions need changing.

This did teach me something though, it taught me dropping or/and letting go of things. It taught me that I don’t need to finish every book just because I started it, that having a mental argument with a YouTuber isn’t going to change his/her opinion, that ‘it’s a habit’ is not reason enough to justify actions which result in a mental argument with myself because I regret my actions and that I am the only one responsible for my emotions and actions. The last one is the most important. We need to accept that a random person on the street who said something hurtful is not the one responsible for how we feel, it is not letting go of what he said that affects us, so it is we who are responsible. The first step to not chasing misery is Acceptance, accepting that we are the ones responsible for our emotions and our actions and though we might have complete control over how we feel, we do have enough control to make a difference, most of it coming from control over our actions.

When we accept responsibility, half the battle is won because now we know that which part needs working and no one else is going to do the work for us. I cannot write about the second part of the battle because, well, I am still at war and I can’t write about a battle I am still in the midst of. But, what I have till now is that most of the time it is fear that does not let us let go of negative actions, emotions and behaviour patterns because we are so used to them that they give us comfort. Pain can be addicting, and this addiction is the first thing that we need to drop.

It is time to pop in the pill of courage and grit to get rid of the disease of fear and negativity.