***Insight*** Undesirables

Lately I have been thinking. I have noticed the little things that make me angry, make me sad or just distress me. I think about the situation and analyse it breaking it down farther and farther until I find the source of my insecurity. Well, I believe I have found all of them. I think I can live a happier more productive life if I try and remove these factors from my personality. They are as follows:

Hatred: Not to be confused with anger. It is healthy to become angry everyonce in a while and I do, but I can almost never completely let my anger go. It looms over me, constanly, never letting me live down the past and, makes me think of savage ideas and gruesome thoughts. But, in reality I must remember, violence can never solve a problem and there is no reason to hold grudges. The only person I can hurt by holding a grudge is myself. I must remeber to be calm and treat everyone like a brother or sister.

Jealousy: I kind of broached this subject in an earlier ***Insight***. No one should ever be jealous of anyone. I must remember only to live to impress myself, not others. I must realize that everyone has their strengths and weaknesses and that nothing can be gained without first giving up something of equal value. For example The "A+" students in school were not born brilliant. They had to give up time in studying in order to gain their knowledge. The same thing goes for athletes. And for those rare people who seem to be the best at anything they do, I know that they had to pay dearly to become how they are. It may be that they don't see their family hardly at all, maybe they don't have many friends because they are constantly pushing themselves, or maybe they are damaging themselves with their successes, they become conceited and believe themselves to be invincible. That could lead to a terrible path indeed. A terrible miserable path.

Pride: Leading off where my last paragrapgh ended I come to my issue of pride. What a hard thing to deal with! Not to boast, but I have been pretty talented at everything I try whether it be academic or athletic. My fate was that I started down the path of pride, blinded by my successes thinking I was the best. This only lead to a "rude awakening" on several occasions that caused some immense feelings of Hatred and Jealousy. I must remember that nothing good can come from Pride, it can lead to so many serious consequences. I should always be content on those things that I do, and disregard both compliments and insults. In the big picture, we are all pretty much the same. Noone is better than another, our strengths and weaknesses balance us all out and put us all on an equal tier. The only ways I can think of to battle my pride is to pay more compliments, expect none, and give service to others.

Shame: What am I ashamed of... these would be things that did not harm other people but have haunted me with mistakes I have done in the past to myselt. No one is perfect. Period. I know this, and I cannot let my shame hold me back from grabbing an opportunity or letting me hone my skills. How will I battle my shame? I guess...form positive habits. Practice, realize what the error was and strive not to do it again. I will not mope in failure, there is now only room for improvement. I will strive to a better me.

Guilt: Sort of Like shame by my definition but the opposite. Things I do that directly hurt those around me and plague me, never letting me live down my actions. A snide comment, gossip ( that's the only word I can think of to call it by), purposefully not helping someone in need and the other small things I do, and the feelings afterward that I get, all fall in to this catagory. I guess in otherwards, this is sort of my conscience only that I get overly distressed after I realized I was rude to someone else. The feeling hangs with me for a long time. My feelings of Guilt and Hatred often accompany each other. I must remember that what's done cannot be undone. The things I have done have happened, that is all that can be said. The only way I can relieve the feelings of guilt and to stop them from comming at all is to always think before I act. It'll both help the people around me aswell as myself.

This is a nice little story, I find it makes a lot of sense:

A Chinese man is walking down a round. On his journey he sees a man in terribly miserable tormented by many demons, all of them swarming around him and screaming at him loudly ordering him to commit evil acts.

"Oh," the now upset traveler tells himself, "that man must be truly wicked then to be in the presence of so many demons."

Ignoring the agonizing man, he continues on when a man sweeping the dust from his shop stops him to ask what is bothering him.

"Ah, well you see," said the traveler, "I have just seen a wicked man sitting among the presence of a horde of demons, he must be truly evil to have such company."

The shop keeper sighed. "No my friend, that is the only evil person around here." He stopped his sweeping and pointed over at a young man slyly picking the pocket of a wealthy land owner. On the thief's shoulder, a small little imp, barely and inch tall, sat on the man's shoulder and whispered evil thoughts into the his ear.

"You see my good sir," said the shopkeeper to the traveler, "You had it backwards, that man you saw earlier is one of the most righteous men I know, it takes dozens of large intimidating demons, using all their might, to try and make him commit evil acts. However, it takes but a whisper from one minor demon to make that theif over there to stray from his righteous path."


Pretty good moral, huh? I think we can all learn a lesson from it. How many demons does it take to make you do something evil? One or Hundreds? Or maybe, you don't heed their voices at all...or at least you don't think you do.