All of us read about how someone overcame their problems. I used to be proud about the problems that I have overcome in the past... But, now, thinking back, I am not as proud as I used to be. I can certainly understand that there is a sense of accomplishment in overcoming a problem and I do agree that its a good feeling. I also agree that it shows our ability to withstand hardships. But, is there any "greatness" involved ?
Do we experience a problem intentionally to overcome it and prove to the world that we faced it successfully ? In most cases, "no". We face problems because we had to. Not because we wanted to. I really admire soldiers, because, they know the consequences and still, they go for it. I am not trying to justify or appreciate war. But, I am just talking about the mentality here. Problems are a fact of life and let us face it, we go through them mostly because we have to. Retrospectively speaking, though the number of problems that we have faced defines our ability, I dont think there is anything "great" about it...
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Problems with Problems...
Posted by Suresh Sankaralingam at 11:37 AM
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6 comments:
Cool.. I wanted to see some arguments and didnt want the blog to be just a forum to exchange niceness...:)
Coming to the argument, I am not saying that one shouldnt be proud. My question is just about how proud one should get. Talking about suicidal rates, it is 0.02% on an average. Can we say that 99.98% face their problems successfully? If so, what is the pride factor in it.
I think we all take risks in lifes. The risk aversion may vary from person to person. We all know what the risks are and sometimes still take it, don't we? I think many times we choose our battles. Of course, mostly we choose battles that we have a reasonable chance we can win.
In many aspects of life, we don't have that choice. We have to face whatever comes our way. But even in those cases, our happiness must come from having made the right decisions and the manner in which we handled the issue. We face the problem, solve it, learn from it, and move on.
In school, we had Math "problems", and I remember the elation when the answer on the back page matched up to my solution. It is the same with life's problems, only there are no answers on the back page!
Okay...I back up..:)... I think I wasnt articulating my case correctly... This is what I wanted to say. We should be personally proud about overcoming every problem that we encounter. At the sametime, when we talk to others, we should normalise proudness with respect to reality and not sympathesize ourselves for having gone through problems... Am I making any sense?
My comment was nullified by author's response.
Bottomline, be proud of your ability to overcome problems, celebrate achievers who overcome bigger problems (according to you). But don't dwell too much on the solved problems, go ahead and attack next problem :)
My take on this..
Yes...Facing problems does make us more resilient and may sometimes help to overhaul one's nature, character, attitude,behaviour etc. And we should be definitely proud about it as it will make us more motivated and confident in future.
Yes..I would like to face challenges in life.But,if it takes major problems to make me resilient or increase my self-esteem or make me happy after battling it, I would rather not face those problems in the first place.
You nailed it brainwaves !!!
(Thank you my saviour...:)...)
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