![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mydepressiontherapy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/trauma_t.jpg?w=770\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
There are no bad experiences. <\/strong>Getting your leg blown off would suck. Getting raped is a terrible, traumatic thing. There are few injustices more terrible than being charged for a crime you didn’t commit. All of those are terrible things that I would never wish on anybody, and if nobody ever had to go through any of that, that would be great. But these terrible things can and do still happen.<\/p>\n But why are they terrible? <\/strong>They’re terrible because they’re damaging. You damage your health, your finances, your emotional well-being. You get hurt. It hurts. If life is about pursuing happiness and maximising pleasure, then such incidences are pretty damn awful. But are they bad experiences?<\/p>\n No experience is inherently good or bad aside from what you choose to make of it. <\/strong>There are people out there who’ve had their legs blown off, been raped, and been imprisoned for crimes they did not commit (Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi and loads of other political prisoners come to mind). They\u00a0suffered. <\/strong>And some people never survive that kind of suffering. But others do. They not only survive, they thrive.<\/strong> They learn from those bitter experiences. They embrace them, accept them and transcend them.<\/p>\n How does that happen? <\/strong>I think these people realise that they have a choice- which is that they can choose how they want to feel about something<\/em>. If someone says something offensive to you, you can choose not to be offended. You may feel<\/em> offended, and on that you don’t have much choice (although I think you can condition yourself against it over time, with practice), but you can choose how you want to respond. And that is unbelievably empowering- perhaps the most empowering thing about the human condition altogether- the ability to have thoughts, and emotions, and to choose not to act upon them.<\/p>\n So what? <\/strong>Well, most of us go through difficult periods at several points in our lives. We get into schools or jobs that we don’t like, relationships break down. For a lot of Singaporean guys, National Service is a terrible, terrible “waste of time”. Time is only ever wasted when you decide to waste it. <\/em>Sitting in an empty room doesn’t have to be a waste of time. I used to think that going to Junior College was a terrible choice and that I was suffering needlessly during my three years there. (I repeated a year.) I’m now serving my NS, and anybody will tell you that life in JC is far more interesting, exciting and an all-around “better” experience than NS. I suppose that might be true on some sort of anecdotal level. I most certainly had more opportunities in JC than in NS- but I didn’t seize them. <\/strong>I had more freedom, but I didn’t make use of it as well as I do now. I had more money, but I didn’t spend it as effectively as I do now. All-in-all, for me, NS is proving to be a “better” experience than JC life. But is it really? It isn’t.<\/strong> Neither experience is “better” than the other. The only difference is my state of mind, and the subsequent choices I make.<\/p>\n Think of the worst experience you’ve ever been through. <\/strong>The most painful, difficult, traumatising, unfair experience. Perhaps it might be the death of a loved one, or some sort of irreversible damage, betrayal, something. It must have hurt, really bad. But think about it. Was it necessarily a bad experience? As an experience, in your collection of experiences- which is what life ultimately is, really- can it really be quantified as “good” or “bad”? The most difficult experiences in your life, if faced with the right frame of mind (I’ll leave you to decide what that is for yourself), will leave you better off for it. In fact, all experience can and should leave you better off for it- if you choose to play your hand right, and act accordingly.<\/p>\n I’m not sure what to think about losing one’s mental faculties, though.<\/strong> On this I am rather divided. In itself, again, I would say it’s not inherently a good or bad experience, but it does have the additional nasty quality of impairing your ability to learn something from it, to make the most of it. Or would it? I don’t know. What do you think?<\/p>\n \u201cLife moves on, whether we act as cowards or\u00a0heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n
\n \n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thinkexist.com\/i\/sq\/as4.gif?resize=11%2C9\" "\\"Author")
Henry Miller