To Be or Not To Be

A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

~A Wise Man Said~

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
 

Back from a trip to Thailand. Great place, great food, and was among great people.

Been struggling with some thoughts since a few days and what better way to sort them out than to talk to myself, or write on my blog, which is the same thing. It’s like this… I have a tendency to speak my mind and I don’t choose my words very carefully, if you know what I mean. If I notice someone who is close to me not doing the right thing, or being unfair or unjust, I will point it out. Sometimes, doing this may take a toll on the relationship. Nobody likes criticism, and nor do I, and it’s difficult for anyone to be open about what is said and evaluate its merit, instead of feeling like they were being personally attacked. In the current case, this tendency of mine has made me feel sad because I don’t know how to restore peace and it has also made me wonder if my pointing things out was the right thing to do? There is no doubt in my mind that my criticism was valid, probably needn’t have been communicated as harshly as it was, but now in retrospect, I wonder how it helped. I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to turn a blind eye and pretend that I didn’t see anything wrong with the person’s attitude, probably they would have realised it themselves later? I don’t know… is it better to turn blind eyes to things that don’t seem right, because if you do take a stand, it may affect your relations with the person? If you really care about a person, shouldn’t you care to correct them and hope that even if they don’t understand now, maybe someday they would realise that you didn’t mean any harm? I don’t know… these are tough things to decide, especially made more tough if you’re wired a certain way. Not everyone cares about the rightness and wrongness of things. Sometimes what seems to matter to people is to keep peace, let things be, not spoil the fun, ignore things instead of let them bother you etc. I don’t know how people manage to do it, but it would be tough for me to ignore and move on as if nothing’s wrong. I don’t know… since I cannot change others, maybe I need to look inwards. Maybe I need to be more discrete in how I communicate what I have in mind, maybe be more discrete about timing, maybe take on a softer approach so that my criticism becomes more acceptable. In the end, it is about how to lose the problem without losing the person… tricky, eh?

 

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 12:30 pm 0 comments
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