The more I grow up, the more I understand my grandma's view of life.
Sometimes back, I was really going through a tough time. I had just been broken up with and I was crying and asking the heavens why that happened to me.
"Why would this happen to me? I haven't done anything bad to anyone." I would cry.
"Honey," my grandma sighed, "bad things don't spare you just because you're innocent." she said as she sat next to me, "In this life, there are bad and good things and any can happen to anyone, what matters is how you handle them." she added.
I was wondering how that was related to my situation until what she said next.
" Bad things will keep happening when you dwell on the previous bad things. External happenings reflect what you internally feel. Think about what was mostly in your mind weeks before the breakup."
A few days before the breakup, I was getting insecure and scared about where the relationship was heading. This was after I got triggered, and I let the bad thoughts take over.
I remember trying to keep my mind free of bad thoughts back then, but I realized it was hard. Both of them needed to coexist, by balancing them.
" All you have to do is keep your mind on the good things, but when bad things pop up, acknowledge them but don't let it take over your thoughts. Too much of the bad thoughts without the good ones leads to collapse and too much of the good thoughts without acknowledging the bad ones lead to stagnation." grandma would say.
These days, I look at the real life situations and how they play out and I understand it. When you look at something like depression, it is always caused by dwelling on the bad thoughts after a number of bad things happen. What always happen is recovery after cultivating the good things or collapse by losing your mind or giving up.
When you look at musicians that only dwell on just the good vibe and never having a touch of vulnerability, they tend to sound inauthentic. Sometimes they are in the music industry for long without growing as an artist.
Trauma is an example of a bad thing. When it gets triggered you can't just ignore it, you have to acknowledge it, and you also can't let it take over you.
Sometimes I even think this is why you rarely see bad things happen to people that you think may deserve. Bad things don't spare innocence and good ones aren't a reward of innocence. It's all a mirror of your internal landscape.
Since then, I've been intentional about the kind of thoughts I keep in my mind.