Forgiving yourself

After countless years, I've finally been forgiven for a decision I made which hurt that person deeply. It now boils down to being able to forgive myself, which is the hardest yet.

Being grateful

There comes a time in our lives when we reflect. Christmas is such a time. And I've come to realise that what I've not done enough in my life is be grateful for all the things I already have - a family, great friends, a good job, decent looks, education, a roof over my head, more than enough food on my plate, clothes, a car. But more often than not, I concentrate on the things I don't have, on the negative. Being grateful is arguably one of the most powerful and profound traits anyone could have. In fact, it is a trait everyone should have. Like myself, and for all those who constantly seek happiness, its actually within us. Look around you; there's good everywhere. Look around you and be grateful. Chances are you'll start to smile. 

If

How I've not come across this before is beyond me. Blunt. Poignant. Profound. The words of Rudyard Kipling.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools: 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Outgrowing the old

I was having a conversation with my girlfriend about how I feel I don't fit in with a certain group of friends and how I may have changed. I spoke about how I think I'm on an entirely different wavelength now; jokes that I would laugh at previously are somewhat offensive now. Crude comments that I used to let slide are now questioned. Generally, I feel I just don't get along as well as I used to with this group of friends. And so I asked my girlfriend if this was normal, if I have "outgrown" this group of friends. Mind you, all of the guys in the group are buddies I've known for at least 15 years, some longer. Some are guys I grew up with. But the question remains, have I outgrown them? Have I changed? Are these things a usual occurrence in life?

I then stumbled on this while looking for a jpeg to go with this post.

The theory of relativity

I'm not going to talk about Einstein's famous theory here, if that's what you're thinking. The relativity I'm referring to is our every day comparisons with all things that go on in our world, be it wealth, intelligence, beauty or just life in general. 

I used to have a career in investment banking. Broadly put, one of the fundamental skills required in investment banking or finance is one's ability to ascertain a value of an asset. One of the more common methods of doing so is to carry out a comparable analysis i.e. to benchmark an asset against other similar assets. Of course there are other technicalities involved, but I reckon you get the gist. 

Every day, we carry out our own comparable analysis. We log on to Facebook and see friends put up pics of a recent holiday, or declare their undying love for their partners, or speak of their new promotion. All these things make us compare them against what we have ourselves. For some, they're unperturbed. But many are affected by their apparent "shortcomings" after the almost automatic internal comparable analysis that has taken place. Why do we compare? Is there a need to compare? Do we really need some sort of justification/benchmark that our lives are better/worse than others? Are the lives of our friends really that much better or their postings merely mask what really goes on their lives? I read somewhere that a high percentage of Facebook users actually feel worse off about themselves after logging on.

The reason for this post is not about Facebook, but what I think of myself and how often I make comparisons of myself with others. I am still trying to figure out if these comparisons stem from the fact that I excelled very early on in life, especially through school and college, only to feel that I have progressively regressed since the start of my working life. To then see others, in particular those who were way "behind" me when I was excelling, being way ahead of me now, makes me question what went wrong, festers doubt in my abilities and has generally altered my once high self-esteem.

There's a light at the end of the tunnel though. I have a girlfriend who's anything like me. She lived most of her life doing only what she wanted to do and without a care in the world. She didn't care if the other girl was prettier or if her colleague had a nicer car. It was, by and large, what she thought of herself. She does not have a Facebook account. In fact, she dislikes social media. The only thing that matters to her are goals she sets for herself, and not any comparison of herself with another. She's successful, contented and most importantly...happy.