Consequences
You’re having a pleasant day, everything seems to be going great. Your friends are happy, your family is happy and so are you, until at least one of these parties is not, and that party is often you. Suddenly the atmosphere of the room changes, from pumpkin spice latte vibes (whatever that is like) to bubbling cauldron of doom juice vibes (think eyeballs and rat intestines). Consequences. Consequences walk in. You’d think Aries would be the one messing up your life but nah fam. It is probably you. Consequences is such a nice soul but I feel bad for the beautiful thing. You look at them with such hate and disgust and go out of your way to avoid responsibilities, and thereby make the version of Consequences you face a bad one. It’s so sad. They just want to be loved but you certainly are NOT helping.
Think of Consequences like you would a pet. It is like a golden retriever when you do what you should do, but it can also maul you to death should you be an irresponsible pet keeper (and yes, it can be both — a golden retriever that mauls you to death. That has actually happened by the way). The point is, there are a lot of bad things that happen to us that we can avoid by being more responsible.
It can be hard to make decisions sometimes but if we do not make a decision then no one else is going to make it for us, at least that is usually the case. It is your responsibility to fight for your happiness. There may be people you meet along the way who genuinely love and care for you and want the best for you. These people may go out of their way to help you, especially on your request. But no one else, and I mean no one else in the whole damn world, is obligated to fight for your happiness. Sure, parents are supposed to take care of you and do right by you, but things like fulfilling your dreams and facing your fears, those are things they cannot do for you. Some children in my country get their dream jobs because of their parents connections, but their parents certainly are not obligated to, and I detest the nepotism that prevails in such cases. So yes, no one, not even the ones who gave you life, are obligated to fight for your happiness.
Was that a bit of harsh reality check? Regardless, it is good for you to know that. Now once you know that only you are responsible to fight for your happiness, you may have some questions, or ideally you should either ask these questions eventually or know the answers.
First off, who are you responsible to? It is an obvious one, and yet it goes over so many people’s heads. You are responsible to yourself for your happiness. You may know this in theory but you need to understand the practical implications of this if you already don’t. By saying that you are responsible to yourself, it implies that you are required to be accountable to yourself. It is not only your job to do right by yourself, it is your job to hold yourself accountable when you mess up. You have a right to ask yourself what you did wrong or how you can improve. You have a right to question those actions that make you unhappy.
You have a right to do right by yourself. Self preservation is something that should be your priority if it already isn’t. I’m not some know it all guru to rank everything for you because frankly I know enough to say it is important and also can tell you that the rankings are sometimes irrelevant. You can rank the importance of water, oxygen, food, weather, etc. for being able to live, but you cannot live without any of those things. Do not bring up special cases of bacteria or microbes. You’re not a bacterium, you’re certainly no microbe. You are this humongous mass of billions of cells that work as one, you are a human. Just like you need food and water and so much more to just survive, for lasting happiness, self preservation is important. Happiness when shared is doubled, but you cannot give from an empty cup, and even if you are happy, if you do not practice self preservation then that makes you like a special cup. A cup that is constantly weathered and damaged and does not sufficiently repair itself if at all. It chips and chips away, and the longer this continues, the more of it that is chipped away. Maybe it was once shiny and whole but over time it can be faded and cracked and look nothing like it once was. That is what happens if you do not practice self preservation.
If you do not practice self preservation, you will end up like that cup. Maybe chipped at the edges, maybe broken entirely, But you would have lost parts of yourself because you were not accountable to yourself. You did not fight for your happiness and so you left yourself without substance to maintain yourself and heal yourself with. You left yourself with much less room for growth. What’s the point of doing things that would make you happy without taking care of yourself. Let me explain with an example:
So let’s say you were going on a trip to your favourite place with all your favourite people. The plans are spectacular, the views are great, the food is amazing. You are supposed to be having the time of your life. IF you practiced self preservation, you would be like a whole cup. You won’t leak from your cracks. But if you do not practice self preservation, you will leak from your cracks. All this happiness that should last, that should make you feel more full, will not be enough. You may feel empty. You may not even be mentally present for the duration of the trip. Self preservation is a key part of fighting for your happiness and being responsible to yourself. So take care of yourself.
I do not know it all and I am not writing a complete life guide here. Take this as a reminder for you to do right by yourself. It is okay not to be okay. It is okay to be scared. You know yourself best. No one else can know your needs and your preferences in as detailed a manner as you do. You can help yourself. I am not saying you should not accept help from others, far from it. I’m saying that when you need to help yourself, you are not incapable of doing the same.
It’s not exactly an easy thing to do but many good things in life don’t come easy. What comes easy goes easy. Honestly if you’re reading this, feel free to start a conversation because I would love to just talk on this with anyone really.
The next question is, what would make you happy? What do you want in life? You shouldn’t fight a war without knowing what your fighting for. You cannot build a reality of your dreams without knowing what the required building blocks are. You don’t need to have your whole life planned out. What you need to know is mainly what your values are. How do you view things as right and wrong. See if we are trying to plan ideal lives for ourselves I am fairly sure many of us could come up with at least two different narratives of that. In my case, I have probably thought up at least ten different ideal lives and homes and whatnot at this point. What matters is your values. What I’m saying may be a bit too vague, or so I fear. I urge all readers to spend time with themselves if they think they need it.
Now being responsible to yourself has other aspects. It is not just about doing right by yourself, it also includes being responsible for your actions. Embrace the Consequences, and deal with it as need be.
If you do right by yourself, you face better consequences, at least I think so from my experience. If you write a story that you have put off for ages, even if you do not show it to anyone else, you feel good about yourself. Maybe you chose to take action and bravely applied to a great job that a small part of you knows you want to try your best at but most of you is scared of taking a chance with. Maybe you heard back from your prospective employer and they said that if you would accept the offer, they will be simply your employer, and the prospective will be taken out of the equation. Is that not wonderful news? Would that not make you happy? But at the same that, is that not a consequence of an action of yours?
You took action, and you submitted the required documents to the employers office. The employer reviewed this, and gave you an offer of employment. That was the result, or the consequence of your actions. It was a good consequence. The consequence of not applying? You would have missed out on a good offer, and even if rejection would have been the fate of your application should you have applied, you may be left with a ‘What if I tried’ question in your mind. These ‘what if I had tried’ thoughts, can over time can turn into ‘I wish I had tried’ thoughts, which can in turn grow into ‘I regret not trying’ thoughts.
So you see, seek from yourself, forgiveness rather than permission. Give things a try. Trying does matter and it does count. There are a lot of loud and obnoxious people in the world, but there are also better people. Also keep in mind that good people can do cruel things and generally cruel people can show kindness.
Let yourself live. Let yourself breathe, let yourself speak. Embrace the consequences. More than you need to fear failure, you need to fear not trying. Failure can help you grow, and sometimes if you look carefully, it can show you things you may later be glad to know, and it is not actually a failure in my opinion. You are entitled to your opinions, but I see most ‘failure’ as learning experiences. Mistakes are learning experiences. I do think failure as concept is however, very real. A mistake from which you learn nothing can be considered a failure. The boundaries are not clearly drawn, at least that is how I see it at present, but that is alright. No one in the world has every single aspect of life put in place and has everything in the clear.
On an unrelated note, I started writing this with a clear thought in my mind, but now at large more things seem blurry and blocked off than they should be. Like there is accurate information I should be able to give, and there is a line of thought I can continue this with, but it’s like some mist has clouded over some parts of the city of my thoughts. Oh well that’s alright, there’s still plenty of clear parts I can walk through and even from those parts alone there’s plenty to share. Besides, I love the mist and the unknown, it does have a beauty of its own.
Now before I forget, while this piece was a bit all over the place, there’s only one major takeaway I’d to stress on. Learn to face the consequences of your actions and just take better action to face better consequences. Not taking any action is like setting yourself up for stress. Do not fly your plane in a way that you will crash and burn to your death, with your puny limbs scattered over several miles somewhere, possibly buried in desert sand or fated to be fish-food. Stay safe and safe life travels to you!
