I had a pleasant conversation with my thirty-year old son today. We talked about my experiences when I was a child, like how I was doing household stuff at a very young age and took care of my three younger siblings. I was the eldest of four.
Of course at that time I resented having to do those chores. I told my son that I realized later in life that the very circumstances I didn’t like then are the very ones I greatly treasure now because I am made strong and pliant like a bamboo in handling challenging situations. At a very young age, I learned to be independent.
Doing household chores, as child was not a welcome thing but circumstances then called for someone to do the job and I was put in a place where I had to be the one to do it. You see, my parents were young then when they had the four of us, their children, didn’t see eye to eye and they had to go separate ways as a couple. In the middle of it all were us, their children. The picture wasn’t so nice then but life had to go on. I was five and I took the reins raising my siblings to what stretched to six years, that is, until before my teenage years. Then into my teenage years, in high school and in my university years, I worked in our family owned grocery store. Again, not a welcome environment for a blooming teenager managing a store then. Looking back now, I realize, I learned to be responsible and committed because I was thrown right into the fire of life too early in life. I needed to make a go of life. A little girl having to face reality at its rawest, grew up to be tough, nothing is too daunting that it cannot be handled with grace.
The past is our springboard to the future- that I learned. We can choose to sulk and brood because we were subjected to a difficult childhood and missed out on life or we can choose to move forward and use the experience as tools we can draw when the going gets tough. Nothing can surprise us anymore if we were able to hurdle the difficulties when we were young. With a winning attitude, we can come out victorious later in life.
If there is any one trait we can embrace, a card we keep close to our heart, it is gratitude. Being grateful for whatever circumstance we encounter on the highway of life, big or small, good or bad, pleasant or difficult, is the best trait we can weave into our character. If we want to have peace with who we are and what our circumstance might be, let us nurture the seed of gratitude in our being. Gratitude will lead us to peace.
And, so I’m grateful for every grain of experience I have faced. My life can only get better moving forward. Knowingly, all the moments of my life heaped together will just be a one bulk of a past one day.
To the gift of past,
Joji
