A different perspective

Remember that amazing secret garden or that ‘huge’ house from your childhood? Years later you go back and visit the same garden or walk by the same house and it seems that the secret garden isn’t as mesmerising or shrouded as you though and the house isn’t as imposing or incredible as you recall. Aside from being a childhood memory and not being clear it’s all about perception. As you grow older your perception of the world changes and with it how you see it as well.

With growing experiences each day our perception of the world around us changes. But enough of this, I am only stating the obvious to you. What I am trying to get at is that with conscious decision to change our perspective we can save so much stress, annoyance, heartache and pain from our lives. Each day is filled with realisation that so much heartache could have been spared if only we had changed our perception of events. I won’t call these regrets, these are experiences that shape and mould who we are and what we have become, however it is a sad though to think that we have wasted all that time worrying and being upset about things that we perceived wrong.

This change applies to our daily lives. On a regular day instead of being annoyed by people who rush by us and regard them as rude,  just move aside and consider that perhaps they are in a rush because of an emergency or because they are late. It’s a circle of events that lead from one to another. We all know that wrath has a way of going right round a circle and finding us again. It’s a vicious circle of events. You treat someone badly, put a downer on their day in the morning and they will then go into the office in a bad mood and snap at the first person they can treat badly who then treats the next person they interact with whom they are allowed to treat badly and this goes on and without knowing this, it will actually come back to you. This applies to kindness and consideration too; it all has a way of coming back to us at unexpected moments.  One of my favourite books is one by Milan Kundera called Immorality in which he expertly and through his commanding writing style weaves several seemingly unrelated lives and stories into each other in a perfect conclusion which leaves the reader in awe of the book. Milan explores how all our lives are bound to each other and our daily interactions with one another shape and create our destiny, our future. This book made me angry whilst reading it, it made me impatient as I could not see what his point was or how anything was relevant for so many chapters. When the conclusion was revealed to me, it humbled me with the way he had so intelligently deceived me into thinking that this book was the ramblings of a bad and possibly mad writer who was not heading to a valid point. I can separate my life into before reading this book and after it. Milan has shown me that coincidences and small insignificant actions of others can shape our destiny, our life before us. This book showed me that I needed to change my perspective, that life is not always as intentional as we perceive and that in fact when things go bad the universe is not plotting against us, it’s a mere coincidence that leads to most events.

The theory is that it’s when you are annoyed you perceive everything to be going wrong, it’s all the rushing, the fretting and the worrying that makes you all the more clumsy and lose command of what you are doing, so you end up thinking everything is going wrong that day…maybe it isn’t. Maybe you need to stop, relax, breathe and change your attitude. Psychologists have determined through research that if you take a pencil, place it in your teeth and hold it there without it touching your lips, therefore replicating a smile. Even though you are not smiling, because your facial muscles contort into that position, after a while your brain plays along with this. You then begin to think you are in fact happier. This has been observed through the monitoring of the brain impulses and electrical fields generated by nerves. Also sitting there and biting onto a pencil makes you feel silly and that lifts your spirits too. So force a smile every so often, hopefully it isn’t as scary as my forced smile which my friends tell me is more of an evil look, and you may just feel better.

We all know that we should be considerate and polite. We all know that Karma is real; be nice so you can get nice back. Yet how many of us give this order of events a single though throughout our day and with our social interactions with people? Not many lately. As London and of course the rest of the world become more and more overpopulated we become more agitated, greedy in our materialism and so driven by our thirst for the ultimate lifestyle and success that in order to reach our goals we push each other aside without any regard. It’s a race of who has the best lifestyle, the best standards of living, who has travelled the most and who is the most ‘content’. I say content in quote marks because it seems to me that the more we thirst for the ultimate lifestyle the less content we are with our lives and even the people in it. It’s a generation of upgraders. Better phones, better clothes, better gyms, better homes and sadly it seems better partners…which people are upgrading whilst disregarding old matured relationships that took years to nurture. Men want younger wives and girlfriends, women want toy boys… We all want the best but no one has any regard for those whom they are hurting in the process.

I digress, the point I am getting at is that with a change of perspective we can change our lives and of those around us. Just the other day a conversation with someone from another life showed me just how important it is to change your perception of past events and incidents. It’s our interpretation of events and life that shape it for us. What may have been a traumatising experience for you may have been completely insignificant to the person who you perceived as out to hurt you and their actions were never intentional. If you feel deceived by a friend or a loved one, take a moment to consider their reasons, however lame, and then make the decision you need to. By all means don’t continue as though nothing happened, you should treat people in exactly the manner that they deserve but don’t let your decision then be a punishment for you as well and therefore  a memory of deceit and hurt for you. This is a translated Turkish saying but ‘rancid vinegar harms its barrel’. Don’t keep hurt inside, don’t be resentful anymore. Let it all go, change the direction of your life and choose a more positive healthier and balanced path for yourself. So spread a little love, show more tolerance and patience to people you meet. You will spare yourself so much heartache. I only wish someone had told me this many years ago when I was a teenager. So take heart and call that friend you won’t speak to, or forgive someone that you so badly want to forgive. Apologise if you know you have been wrong, apologise if you were not wrong if you need to.

There is enough evil in this world as it is. Let go of the anger.

Find people or things that make you happy. Not material things. Collect nice friends like I do...Find peace in people close to you, your family. Nothing calms and soothes me like my beautiful nieces Melis and Leylanaz. There is no comparable feeling to having my nephew Ozan in my arms, full of joy and hope with his little smiling face. There isn’t a better voice to hear than my mum and sister each time I am troubled.

Make peace and make amends. It is *Bayram after all.