Let it be.
Sometimes it can take a long time to realize that you don’t have to try to hurt everyone who hurts you. It can seem like human nature to immediately contemplate or seek vengeance, but the fact that it is sometimes harder to walk away from revenge—especially when obtaining it would be all too easy—than it is to take strides toward it should reveal the worth that both restraint and maturity warrant.
However, if you can manage to take the high road even once, it’s fairly easy to realize that thinking about negative things only prevents you from thinking about more of the numerous positive aspects of life. With this in mind, it becomes at least a little easier to stop desiring or attempting to please everyone around you, and it becomes even easier to naturally desire and attempt to please yourself (as you should).
Sometimes it takes a while to learn that feeling at peace can be more worthwhile and therapeutic than feeling happy or excited ever could be; as this newfound peacefulness sinks in for the long-term, it can easily spawn a type of happiness and excitement of its own. Surprisingly, you don’t even have to be OK with the world around you or with the state of the world in general in order to experience this happy peacefulness. As alluded to, if you can get used to recognizing and absorbing the myriad positive aspects that always exist in life, it becomes extremely difficult to become fixated or deeply disturbed by any of life’s minor, negative details.
Sometimes it takes time to realize that human beings frequently have opportunities to choose between drama and peacefulness, but they opt for drama before they even realize it isn’t necessary. Once undesirable situations and sensations like these are commonly avoided, other things like fights and arguments seem to materialize far less frequently, and with much less ferocity. In time, any human being can glean a new understanding of the notion that the loudest sound of all is the sound of words unspoken, and that not saying anything usually says more than articulating anything ever could.
Oftentimes it takes years or even decades to learn that your thoughts, words, and actions have the ability to give you power over other people and the ability to give other people power over you. Even if you don’t have the power to control what someone else thinks, says, or does, many times maintaining and demonstrating your power over yourself is more than sufficient. What’s more, eventually most human beings will learn that focusing on what is happening inside of themselves—at least on a fairly regular basis—enables us to better comprehend many of the things happening outside of us, around us, and to us.
Of course, nothing will ever be for absolute certain, and countless things will always remain unknown, but at least one notion seems strikingly true: choosing peaceful inaction over-excited reaction is a long step toward peaceful happiness.
source
