From Regrets to Emotional Evolution
“For a man, to Conquer himself, is the first and noblest of all victories.” — Plato
But how does a man conquer himself? We see a lot of people nowadays all happy, but once we get them to open up, we find a lot of them are full of regrets. Even famous and influential people have regrets in their lives. Be it not asking that girl out, or some choice they made in the past, or maybe committing too early in a relationship. But dissect a little and you see people forget that what they chose to do in those moments was based on what they were experiencing in those moments. Maybe the comfortable fear took over them or may be the vile and villainous hope. Whatever it was, that moment called for it.
At every point in life there are a hundred different paths to choose from but we can only choose one based on who we are and what we want in those moments. There is no right or wrong. There are only experiences which can be good or bad or a mix of both. If we were to go back in time and face the same situation again with the same set of experiences we had at that time, all of us will choose the same path over and over. It’s only because of these new earned experiences that we have gained along the way that will help us take fresh paths in the future. So a mature brain will never look back at a situation and regret. It will accept, learn and move on. But humans are emotional beings and thus we fall prey to our past easily. So how does a man conquer himself. Perhaps by starting to accept his choices. A human who can accept his choices is an evolved being.
I am still learning this lesson. I cribbed about a lot of things in life, regretting a lot of things in the past, punishing myself for every stupid little mistake that I made. But only after rising above these things was when I realised, we humans are on an experiential journey. No mistake will ever be too big, no decision will ever be too wrong.
