Learn to Respond

Many of us respond to the past. Don’t we? We worry about what might have been, what could have been, what should have been etc. By doing so, we become party to draining our emotion and time and locking us in the past! Can we respond to the past? No. We cannot respond to the past even with our best responses! We cannot turnaround the past. None of these can be done about the past. The past is past! Can we do anything else? Yes. We can do one thing for sure! We can learn because the past can be a great teacher! It can teach us and provide us guidelines for the future. Learning from the past and not worrying about is a great way of living. It can enable us to respond to the present!

Those who worry about the past, construct their past in the present. And they respond to the past. Often, they react to the present and recreate past mistakes and failures. Those to learn from the past, respond very well to the present and plan for the future. Learn to respond! Or worry to react! It is your choice!

Learning from mistakes is good. It comes with a huge cost! Those who are wise, learn from other’s mistakes, instead of having to learn from their own!

Whether you ‘learn to respond’ or ‘worry to react’ or ‘do something else to do yet another thing’ depends on your attitude. You have the freedom to choose your attitude in any circumstance.

“We who lived in [Nazi] concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way… The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed…..Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him – mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.”

-- Man’s Search of Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl

One of you may say, “Neither do I worry about the past nor I learn from it. Every day happens to me as it happens. I take one thing at a time and deal with it. What is the big deal?” Well. To those who live in solitude, it may work. This is not for us, who live with our families in our communities as it will lead us to frustrate others around us! Do we want to?

Let us learn to respond!