What's in it for me?

"You are only as good in this subject as the number of problems you are able to solve" says our advanced mathematics teacher wincing while my classmates and I were struggling to keep up with the lesson. You may wonder, how did I manage to survive such a subject that never failed to both astonish and sting everyone who dared to take it?

"Experience is a bitch" or so they say. At some point in our lives, we may have acknowledged some truth in this statement. The number of unpleasant experiences you have on a certain matter doesn't guarantee that you learned. You can only learn when you develop a sense of awareness that would allow you to avoid or overcome such unpleasantness.

This is comparable when you are struggling to understand a particular concept or topic. You've tried reading through the material, tried to understand the process of solving the problems and tried doing everything that is supposedly needed to learn that you have finally reached a point where you had run out of options and motivation to continue but you still aren't convinced that you fully truly learned. Most people would get heartbroken at this point. If only effort and intention could be counted in the real world rather than outcome alone, but if that would happen, there would be no point in improving at all.

However, this feeling of lack can only be addressed if we introduce awareness into the equation, and then and only then, can we start to truly learn. This may be applied in dealing with other people. It doesn't really matter how many times we go toe to toe with the people around us. However we know that it becomes very depressing to never be able to avoid these kinds of conflicts (especially if it keeps happening more frequently than normal), and the framework of such happenings are often the same. We can only address these if we start to become aware of the root cause of such conflicts and take action on them.

Still, some people struggle with delivering out the actions that are originally born out of good intentions (e.g. me). The fact that it's very easy to neglect effort in improving ourselves makes things worse because people seldom notice the effort a person has to execute in order to achieve that outcome. Most times, the improved person doesn't get credit for that no matter how much mountains he or she had moved. The only reward that the improved person gets is growth, that this person would be able to live without being abrasive and hurting other people in the process, and that alone should be enough. 

We all need to keep waking ourselves up to the possibility that we might be wrong, that we may need to improve, that we may need to struggle in order to become better. That alone is very difficult to do, especially since the element of pride is always there whether we like it or not. 

The idea of "if you really love me, then you will accept me and all my flaws" which has been circulating around the internet these days is the exact diametrically opposed statement of the past previous paragraphs. This idea is dangerous in a way that we are teaching permeable young minds to become stagnant and avoid going through the hard path of self-improvement. If all of us really want to make things work with the people we love, then it's high time to reevaluate ourselves and how we do things.

Credits to my partner for these ideas.

Here's a picture of my aunt's flowers to brighten your day. Cheers!