The Slide of Life

Teacher – B you have proved yourself to be useless. You don’t deserve to study here. Look at A he (feel free to change the pronoun) is the perfect student, he is born with talent and intellect.

After the teacher leaves…

Person B – She is always putting me down and putting you on a pedestal. She hates me because I don’t have inborn talents.

Person A – No. She wants you to improve which is why she criticizes you. She does not want me to improve which is she showers me with false praises.

Person B – If that is the case, why did I fail the last exam? She failed me on purpose.

Person A – I didn’t get great marks either. She showered me with false praises as usual, which is why I became overconfident and scored bad. She is extremely manipulative.

The above scene depicts our behavior. Yes, yours and mine. We sometimes step into the shoes of A and other times in the shoes of B; the teacher and the other student become society. We are always looking for ways to victimize ourselves. I am not talented enough, everybody is always targeting me, I am not given the opportunity, the teacher failed me because she is prejudiced, the list goes on. This results in us sympathizing with ourselves and looking for excuses reaching our full potential. We also expect sympathy from others and are disappointed if our expectation is not met.

When we consider that we are the victims and that all wrong things happen to us or people are rude, cruel or unfair only to us, we give birth to jealousy. Jealousy in turn further increases our tendency to victimize ourselves and we also start blaming others for our problems. With passing of time we keep poisoning our minds, making our lives miserable. We hop on to a gigantic slide, the kind we see in an amusement park. We litter the slide with nightmares created by our insecurities and victimizing ourselves. The result we are always scared and miserable. We forget that the nightmares are dreams and we can end by opening our eyes. The moment we become aware that the reality we are living is a nightmare birthed by our insecurities and self-victimization and open our eyes the ride becomes amusing instead of scary. Happy sliding through life.