Healing Space (Diwali Special): How to use your life experiences, to light your way

Wear who you are like a badge of honour. This is the source of your light. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

Note to readers: Healing Space is a weekly series that helps you dive into your mental health and take charge of your wellbeing through practical DIY self-care methods.

A lot of us tend to think of our lives as having moments of wasted opportunity. We should have applied to that college, could have studied harder, monetized our hobbies before the start-up boom, migrated, taken that job when we had the chance, but life got in the way, or we just made poor choices. However, we often ignore that our lives have a wealth of resources and opportunities - yes, even in the failures or regrets, or especially in those - that are present for the mining.

See the grandeur of the everyday

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You might think, I’m just a stockbroker, or an IT consultant, homemaker, or teacher, I haven’t had the wealth of experience one reads about as ‘inspirational’ – like people who go on expeditions to Mt Everest, sail around the world, or even ordinary people doing something extraordinary, like overcoming disability, founding a million-dollar home business or transforming people’s lives through their social service.

But here’s what you’re missing – a lot of what drives people is extraordinary strength and drive that show up in the ordinary challenges of life. Homes are built by people who diligently carry the burden of bills and EMIs, of the job they don’t necessarily like, working alongside annoying people, studying as they work, dealing with responsibilities that they didn’t ask for, doing the right thing, maintaining the peace, and being general stand-up people to everyone around them. And that’s inspirational in a broken world.

Real growth is often internal and quiet

A lot of phases of growth in people’s lives are emotional, cognitive, and spiritual. Sometimes the impact of these is not visible outwardly. Let’s say you made poor choices in your youth, it impacted your health, and you’ve now put yourself through a phase of cleaning up your diet, dependencies, exercise, and habits. That is often much harder to do consistently for a prolonged period than designing one brilliant architectural feature. These are two different feats, and we tend to value the latter more because it has visibility and longevity.

But a lot of long-term changes are not about the big bang transformations, but about the small, sustainable tweaks that are made consciously and with much effort. It’s not easy to control one’s temper, to turn away from the midnight snack, to put up with an abusive sick person or an abrasive boss, but there are people who have the strength to take this for years on end for a greater cause. For many people, that’s done in the form of supplementing family income, taking the loan to buy a family home, looking after a sick elder.

Many of you have given up radical opportunities in your life, to migrate or get a big promotion, take a loan to go to a foreign university, to be by someone who needs your help. You’ve paid off a sibling’s debt, sent a family member to college instead, or funded your siblings’ wedding, which meant you couldn’t be the thrill-seeker that you would have liked to be. These are the source of your light, your life experience and your wisdom.

Find the values in what you have achieved

Dedication, commitment, honesty, integrity, diligence, discipline, and a lack of self-absorption are hard qualities to come by in the world, and rare ones. These are the backbone of families, of neighborhoods, functioning and peaceful societies and most relationships. However, these involve a lot of slow, painstaking grunt work, on a daily basis. These are rarely ever praised or receive awards or acknowledgement. Yet, they are the potent locations of your hard-earned skill. Locate the values that you have derived from living your life, from the choices you have made, and highlight them. What did it take to look after a sick elder for years? Patience, care, watchfulness, discipline. We tend to not look at our earned credentials unless they come certified by an institution, but these are your skills and values too.

Value consistency over quantity and grandeur

The spark in a person is more useful when it is not just a flash in the pan. Even in work environments, people value those who are reliable over geniuses who are erratic. Nothing beats the reliability of kids and adults alike being able to come home every day to a stable environment. Knowing the calm General Practitioner will quietly be in his clinic every day and you can trust him not to make a misdiagnosis. The domestic help who shows up on the clock, the bus driver who reaches the bus stop route with precision, and the vegetable vendor or pharmacist whom you can take for granted will help people more than the long-distance athlete. Light is not just derived from the firecrackers and the explosives, LED lights and neon signs, but from a series of small diyas dotting the space that need repeated refilling in order to shine.

Work to the strength of your experience and values

Sometimes we spend our lives wishing we had what others have, or envying what they have been able to achieve. However, your life is not their life. Even if you had the same opportunities, your mindset, mental make-up, the lens of your perspective and everything that has shaped you, would make you very different in that self-same role. So it is futile to wish to be like anyone else. You are who you are, unique, because of all the circumstances of your life that made you so. When you begin to celebrate that uniqueness, there’s a part of you that ceases to fear what doesn’t come your way, and instead focuses on what does, what is best suited to you, your experience and value system, and you begin to wear who you are like a badge of honour. This is the source of your light.