“Work like you don’t need the money;
dance like no one is watching;
sing like no one is listening;
love like you’ve never been hurt;
and live life every day as if it were your last”
the above highlighted segment is a common phrase, i’m sure, many of us have heard that is shared and accepted like a daily horoscope, but the actual understanding of what it truly illustrates is not so much of a commonality. life is hard as it is, and when certain unfortunate events occur, we can either let it break you or let it make you stronger. learning to move on with your life is the greatest lesson any one of us can learn because life has it’s sunny days, but every once in awhile, it’s certainly going to rain. being exposed to certain stimuli and particular scenarios, like going to the free throw line when your team is losing with a few seconds left, or being seemingly undermined&interrupted during a group presentation by another groupmate, or even the commonly devastating situation of having your heart broken and learning to love yourself again, are all easier for some than others, and obviously, it’s due to having previous life experiences of the same situation over and over.
whatever may have happened to you in your life affects who you are today, so when we’re presented with a certain situation, before we can react, we quickly tell ourselves a story. a story of how it felt when you were in said situation previously and recalling your given reaction. that’s how we are conditioned and molded with who we are as people, not how you act when the chips are up, but how you react when they’re almost out. and when i say “we tell ourselves a story,” i’m not saying we start going “once upon a time..” in our heads, but in a blindingly quick instance, you remind yourself of how you, of your own person, dealt with a certain situation before. if you’re talking and someone starts laughing AT us, do you get offended? or do you recognize and consider the person that’s laughing at you? or do you just laugh it off and continue to be professional/thebiggerperson? if you always fight back when someone laughs at you, then yes, the given scenario of someone laughing at you would exhibit a raw human instinct, but since that’s never the case, what else is there to consider?
we recall ourselves to a similar time before that and remind ourselves how we reacted. it’s only human. if you touch fire, and it’s hot, and you touch it again, and it’s just as hot.. it’s always going to be hot ALL the time. but interacting with people and living everydaylife isn’t black&white like when you torch yourself just to find out that it’ll burn you everytime. some people, for instance, take heartbreak differently than others. some people console themselves with food, alcohol, or other habit-forming activities to be indulged in solely to take your mind off of that person you thought was the “one” and only one for you. some anti-drugs, or in this case, anti-loves, are obviously healthier than others, but it’s all about taking that energy that was once directed toward someone and redirecting it to something or someONE else. will you ever love again? only when you want to..
some people decide to sleep with other people to get over someone, and as unhealthy and unsafe that may seem, it works for certain individuals. others may act in a seemingly opposing manner, to the point of not wanting to engage in simple conversation with the opposite sex because their whole being has been convinced that “they’re all like that.” this is a perfectly normal reaction; if you’ve only encountered a certain situation, such as heartbreak, and have had the same result once or twice or 12 times, what makes you think it’s going to be different the 13th? your trust in the good of people? the inevitable change and optimism of humanity?
certain cues might even remind you of your past.
“you’re so beautiful.”
“i miss you so much.”
“can’t you put more salt in these eggs?”
“i can’t live without you.”
all these instances might be said by someone in the present, but it can easily trigger you to think of someone in your past.
this comes from the quickest story we tell ourselves in that .0000007 second before we react. having the strength to tell ourselves that certain situations don’t necessarily produce the same conclusion is basically how we move on with our lives. i recently encountered my own experience of this while giving a eulogy for my late godmother. i was up there at the podium, reading what i stayed up til 6am that same morning to write, and i couldn’t help but be beside myself and i started to feel the water works pumping heavily. ”Could I continue reading,” I thought? I had to, if for anything, for my late godmother. I didn’t care how long it was going to take me to read what i had to say; i wasn’t up there for the people in the audience, i was up there for that one person that physically wasn’t.
as soon as i was approaching the word “sick,” just 4 sentences into my written speech, i started to choke up. i only continued because i realized that if i just told myself that my late godmother would be laughing at me right about now if she saw me crying up here in front of all these people because of HER, i’d be cracking up hysterically, too. some people at the viewing may have thought i was weird, and i only say that for mere background effect; i couldn’t care less what everyone else thought. i needed to finish. i was only able to continue because i realized that if i started to force myself to laugh, i’d be able to move on from being choked up to slowly continuing my last words to my late godmother. [thanks, ninang]
the way i see it, recalling past experiences is smart; learning from your mistakes is simply evolving into a better person and a bare essential to human survival. but whenever we face adversity or heartache, if we want to change the way we are and the way we react, it’s simple: change the aforementioned “stories” you tell yourself and you will soon learn that you can live without hesitation or pretense. like you’ve “never been hurt before.”
know that you CAN and then DO it, because knowing and not doing is simply not knowing. if you allow your past to control your future, then you’ll never live another second of your life.
