How Not to Let Ugly Situations Mess You

What the world throws at us is not necessarily your choice, but what you make out of it is entirely your choice.

Other people are doing what they want, but it’s your reaction which causes the suffering. There is no way you can fix yesterday, but you can create a tomorrow.

So I have a childhood friend, she grew up in a very uneasy family environment because her parents had a very strange relationship, due to which she grew up amongst constant fights, with lack of love.

So, across the years, I've seen her grow up as a person who's become very reserved.

She does not believe in love, she doesn't believe in the power of relationships. So, how can we sort of not let such toxic relationships impact us so negatively in life?

See, everybody is finding a certain excuse for their own miseries. So my parents were like this, so I am like this. Well, this is unfixable because we can't change your parents now. All right? Hello? Can we change them now? So you need to understand this, especially if you have gone through tough situations in life or horrible situations in life, let's say. Is it not important that you become wiser sooner than other people?

Sooner than other people who've grown up in comfort who do not know what it is to see those things.

Is it not very important that you should become wiser?

No, instead you choose that you also become miserable because they were miserable people.

So, let us understand this much. You have an intelligence to recognize that they are living badly.

How come you don't have an intelligence to recognize you are living badly right now?

And you don't even have the fundamental integrity to see, If I'm living badly, it is me who is making this, because there may be situations and situations. For every one of us there are situations.

In fact, the more you try to do in the world, the more and more, many ugly situations you will have to face whether you like it or you don't like it. Okay? Now because you face ugly situations, will you also become ugly? Or you will use this as manure to blossom into a wonderful flower?

This is a choice that you have. So, everything that hurts us, everything that in some way is negative in a given situation whether you will become wise or you will become wounded is your choice.

Do not look for ideal situations because there is no such place, no such place. Wherever you go, there will be something happening that you think is negative.

Whether it's negative or not, I don't want to make a judgment, but in a given place, you think there is negative.

A whole lot of people who have applied to get into your institution like ISB, they are all thinking “If I enter ISB, it is like heaven. But I'm sure there are many people in your institution who think this is the most horrible place, full of politics, full of nonsense, full of this. Aren’t there such people? Hello?

I'm sure they are there; you don't become one of them. Because in every place there are issues, all right? Where there are two people, there is an issue. How we conduct these issues depends on, are we in a state of conscious response to these issues or are we in some compulsive reaction to these issues, this determines how we conduct ourselves.

This has become a syndrome all over the world because they've all read a little bit of Freud, little bit of Maslow, little bit of all this European psychiatric stuff and everybody is a psychiatrist.

Because my parents were like this, I'm like this. Come on! Where is your intelligence?

If your parents were like this, you must take a vow you will never ever be like that. Hello? Yes or no? If your parents lived so badly, if it is true, I don't even know whether they lived badly or not. This is her perception of it, all right? We do not know how they lived, but going by her words, assuming it is true, if they lived badly, is it not your business to see never ever you commit such mistakes as they are committing in their lives? Is this not what human intelligence capable of? Or human intelligence is like.

You know, they study rats and make all kinds of conclusions about human beings today. A whole lot of experiments about human beings are on rodents. We're looking at the behavior of the rodents, people say, “Oh, human beings like this, like this. Is it not a sad story being the most evolved creature on this planet?

I want you to understand for you to come to this level of intelligence, it’s taken millions of years of work of evolution to get you here, to the peak of evolution on this planet. So being the peak of evolution, are we displaying that we are at the top of the world? Are we?

No, we want to sit on somebody else's head and think top of the world. No, we are already top of the world as human beings, isn't it so? But look at the way we're behaving, all the time complaining about something or the other. Let us understand this – what the world throws at us is not necessarily your choice, but what you make out of it, is entirely your choice. Yes? What you make out of it is entirely your choice. Your experience of life.

This much you must come to every one of you young people if you want if you want your potential to open up in the world, one important thing that you must fix in your life is your experience of life either peacefulness or agitation, either joy or misery, blissfulness or you know, suffering whatever it is your experience, your experience is entirely made by you Other people are doing what they want, their drama they're conducting.

It is your reaction to that which is causing these experiences to you. Right now, if I abuse you I won't, I'm just telling you, suppose I abuse you, the abuse is in my mouth. It is not a bullet, it doesn't come and hit you.

But it's your reaction which causes the suffering, isn't it? Suppose I abuse you nicely in Tamil language or this guy will understand, that’s a problem if I abuse you in a language that you don't understand with a smile on my face, you will think I'm saying sweet things to you, isn't it?

And you will respond nicely to me. So, I'm telling you, your experience of what is happening with you right now is 100% determined by you. Human experience happens from within, not from outside. Outside influences are there.

How far we allow them to affect us, unless they are physical situations you’re in a war zone; somebody's shooting at you that are a different matter. All right?

That needs to be dealt with in a different way. Even there, a conscious response will give you a better chance of survival than wild reactions. So, the privilege of being human being is this, that we have an intelligence to determine what should be our experience of life. Other creatures are in a natural, instinctive, compulsive reaction. We are supposed to be above that.

But most human beings are trying to disprove this and they are also in a compulsive state of reaction.

And above all, parents. Well, they're living the way they know best, isn't it?

If they knew any better, they would have done better. They're doing their best.

Well, they gave birth to you, which are a phenomenal thing, maybe not willingly, but they gave birth to you one way or the other. And they gave you enough food and education and nonsense, whatever you needed and brought you up to this level.

Now don't keep on looking at the rear view mirror forever. They brought you up, you’ve grown up into an adult, and you survived. All right?

Many children die early on, parents not being able to provide. A whole lot of millions of children die in the world because parents are not able to provide for the children that they give birth to.

They've brought you up, you've grown up, and you’re in the rear view mirror. Please leave the rear view mirror and look ahead because you can't fix your past.

There is no way you can fix yesterday, but you can create a tomorrow. Let's make that happen.