I love to learn many things, and throughout my life I’ve been inspired to learn from many experiences and circumstances. It’s because of my ideas and decisions that I find myself in the place where I stand today. People, in general, express themselves in different ways, depending on their own life experiences, but who can know for certain, to the point of being able to advise others, what the right way to live life is, who can know what is the right thing to choose at any given moment in life. It’s easy to look at others’ mistakes or faults, from the outside, but it might not be as easy for them to notice these issues themselves. For example, the other day I was walking with my wife and I noticed that a little leaf had ended up on her hair somehow. She had probably been walking with it on her head for a while now, but since it was on the opposite side of where I was walking I didn’t notice it at first. However, as soon as I turned for some reason and looked at her straight on I noticed it right away and removed it. Of course, it’s not a big deal, nothing would happen if she would have just kept walking with the leaf on her head, but that’s not the point. The point is that it made me think, it made me realize that perhaps there’s things that we don’t notice about ourselves, yet might be easy for others to notice. Your hear is on your head, so it’s impossible to see it, at least the part of it that doesn’t slide down your face. Of course, my hair is my hair, so I should be more familiar with it than anyone else, yet for some reason, precisely because it’s mine, I can’t see a good part of it, while others easily can. In fact, I can never look directly at my own face, I can only see a reflection of myself in the mirror. Everyone else can see my real face though, even though it’s my face. If I have something on my face or hair, someone who looks at me can remove it, but it’s difficult for me to see whatever’s on myself. You might be familiar with the Bible quote “First, remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye.” I love quotes like this, quotes that provide general wisdom on how to grow as human beings, because most of the time we make changes in our life depending on the situations we are facing, and even though we can’t know for sure what the right decision is at any given moment, if we are armed with real wisdom then we have less chance of making the wrong decision. We are always wondering what is the right way to navigate life, how can we become better? We often have doubts and insecurities that lead us to anxiety and indecision. That can be a problem, yes, but in reality, it comes down to how we look at things. Our indecision is a chance for us to analyze the situation further, maybe to seek advice from others who can relate to our situation. If someone has a suggestion for us, we should humbly listen. As long as we understand that we are in control of our lives, we have no reason to be afraid of any words that may come to us from anyone. On the contrary, we never know if a perfect stranger could be the messenger we needed in order to finally understand something we’ve been indecisive about for so long. We should humbly listen to advice, then analyze it to the best of our abilities, and finally make a decision. I’ve received lots of great pieces of advice throughout my life, some of which I have saved into the book of my memory, and some which I have unfortunately discarded and thrown into the trash. I probably could have saved myself some trouble if I had listened to some of those that I discarded, but changes can be both good and bad in the end, in the sense that, one can learn even from the worst mistakes, in the end it’s all up to you. Again, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I can not guarantee that any way of life is the right way, I can only share my own experiences, and I know that when things seem completely hopeless, usually that’s when we can dig deep into ourselves and find truth, find what we’re truly made of, we can reflect, we can get to truly know ourselves and grow, and eventually we can bounce back stronger than ever. The thing I wrote about how it’s easier to see someone else’s mistakes, and then the quote I posted about removing the beam from your own eye before removing it from others’ seem to be a bit contradictory, but so is life. We might be faced with a situation where we can easily remove someone’s obstacles for them, but is that always the right thing to do? Do we always know what’s best for others? Could we be doing them a disservice by preventing them from living their own lives and overcoming their own obstacles? Just as I said we should listen humbly to advice, we should also be as humble as we can when providing advice, we should not force others to follow in our footsteps, because even though we may have learned a specific lesson from our own life experience, we may not know everything that someone else has lived through, that has brought them to their own current experience, so we might not really be helping them as much as we think we are. Should we do all of our kids’ homework, for example, so that they will never learn anything? Should we shelter them from the evils of life, so that they will be paralyzed when shit finally does hit the fan? No, we should provide our humble advice, not in order to manipulate, just so that we can share what we know. From then on, it’s up to them, and if they’ve learned to listen to advice in a humble manner and then analyze it, rather than instantly rejecting anything that may contradict their beliefs, then maybe they might end up actually making a right decision, a right decision influenced by you, because you shared with love and not with force.
much love
~ rebel eye
rebel eye 