Let me begin with a brilliant quote from JK Rowling —
Humans have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them.
via Albus Dumbledore
I don’t know why people make the same mistake again and again. But I just caught myself repeating the same stupid mistake recently. Worst of all, I don’t even regret it, or think it is ‘stupid’ or a ‘mistake.’ To me at the time, it was a conscious choice.
Oy.
You see it coming. You know the consequences. But still, you do absolutely nothing to prevent it from happening. You just let it happen. You even encourage it to happen.
But why? I was tempted. I didn’t try to fight it. I felt good even — at least for a while. I promised myself that I wouldn’t do it ever again. But if circumstances allow, it may happen again. I don’t trust my judgement. I need to call upon my stronger will, my higher self to interfere.
In most cases, if you don’t stop it now, the collateral damage may be too much to cope with later. That I know.
Matthieu Ricard, Buddhist monk, the happiest man in the world says —
Happiness is not the pursuit of an endless succession of experiences. That’s a recipe for exhaustion more than happiness.
Happiness is a way of being.
The challenge is to let that way of being overtake all other emotional states.
I will try. I will try.
This time, I mean business.
I will end this note with another quote from JK Rowling —
We’ve all got both light and dark inside us.
What matters is the part we choose to act on.
That’s who we really are.
via Sirius Black