Customarily, I glance at Facebook. Though I have unfollowed most of the people from my former life, yet sometimes, something pops up. I see pictures of people I once knew and for the first time I feel nothing…no hurt, no anger and no regret. Though I can easily imagine being there- the coversations, the gossip, peals of laughter…my uneasiness. Yet, I fail to recognise the faces and what they once, meant.
It is a New Year miracle! I spent the last year being terribly angry. They say anger is sad’s bodyguard…..Well, I’m a creature with a highly evolved defence mechanism. The juvenile expectation that people are supposed to stand by your side in trying times, has just made me bitter. I’m guilty of having a romanticised view of reality.
I recently read two paragraphs that helped.
The heading of one of the pieces is….Thinking too much is someone else’s problem. “If you use your brain, it is bound to create a problem for others if they are seeking to use, abuse or control you or keep you dependant or fearful.” M. Scott Peck explains further, that our culture discourages thinking and often candor (I have most often been criticised for my inability to keep it in). “If we choose to think for ourselves, we must be braced for backlash. We risk being seen as eccentrics or malcontents. We may be presumed to be on the fringes of  mainstream society, regarded as different and abnormal in the worst sense of the word.”
The Hadith of At-Tirmidhi on the other hand states, ” Be mindful of God and God will protect you. Be mindful of God and you will find him before you. If you ask, ask of God, if you  seek help, seek help of God. Know that if all the people were to gather together to give you the benefit of anything, it would be something that God has already prescribed for you and that if they gather together to harm you with anything, this would only be as God has already ordained.”
Whether, I intellectually choose to view the situation or resign to it in the manner of a spiritual fatalist, the inevitable conclusion that I have come to is- it’s all just water under the bridge.