My last blog topic was about taking responsibility for our emotions, and this time I’ll talk about what motivates us to do that and what makes us not do it. Those who take responsibility for their emotions are taking the initiative for their own lives. In other words, they “stand on their own.” They are prepared for whatever situation may arise, and take responsibility for themselves and the choices they make. The opposite would be easier to imagine. It’s people who always complain about the situation they’re in. People who have the mind of a victim. They think the cause of a situation is always someone or something else, not themselves. Either consciously or subconsciously, they make excuses to not to take responsibility for their own life. These people might think, “I’m doing pretty good.”
How do I know this? Because I was like that: Not taking any responsibility for my own life and thinking that all the bad things that happened to me were because of what someone else did. Or thinking, “Oh I had bad luck,” and going to a bar after work every day, complaining about everything, drinking and smoking all night with coworkers, getting drunk, going home, and forgetting about everything.
How did I escape from that behavior? Actually, I’m not sure how I did it. But I can tell what the difference was before and after: it was because I started to think about what it would be like for me after I die.
I talk about this in my blog “Memento mori” (Latin for “remember you must die”):
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Nowadays, it seems like people don’t think much about death; actually, it seems as though they prefer to avoid thinking about it. But no one can escape death. They may not be thinking about it consciously, but they know subconsciously that they’ll die one day. And as much as a person avoids it, the more it will affect them. It’s a law of the universe: action and reaction: if you hide something, it’ll appear in a different place.
So, people don’t want to face the fact that they’ll die one day. They are so attached to physical things like money, cars, houses, clothes, and phones, and attached to other people, too, like family, friends, etc. They live with the illusion that they own those things; they think, “those are mine.”
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As I said in “Memento mori,” people don’t want to face the fact that they will die one day — they are living in an illusion. And they’ll be takers. The takers of the world take whatever they want and they still complain, because they are never satisfied.
They are like big babies. Making demands for what they want, crying out if they are not comfortable, making a fuss about anything they feel isn’t right for them. And they let others take care of their emotional disasters; they let others clean up the pees and poops they leave behind when they act this way.
Another way to live is by standing on your own. Standing on your own two feet. Live by taking responsibility for whatever situation you’re in, and act as though it’s entirely your choice to be here.
In other words, be a grownup.
This phrase is often misused in society. It’s used by parents and teachers when they tell kids to “be a grownup” to try to control the kids and get them to listen.
But I stand on my own, and not because someone told me to — I do this because of what I want to be, the way I want to be, and the motivation to do this springs from within my heart.
So, let’s stand on our own, and help others to stand by themselves, too.
Let’s end the childhood of humankind.
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