During the week paying attention to internal register was not a great experience for me. Most of the time I had a register of bad feeling. Newspaper came late and I felt bad. While talking on phone the tea got cold and I felt bad. There was rush in the train and I felt bad. Because of rains there were water puddles on the road, and I felt bad. There were rarely any occasions on which I felt good.

I tried to recollect the discussions of the meeting. I recalled learning that contradictory actions make you feel bad. They make you feel bad as there is a divergence between your feelings, thinking and actions. I realised that even at that time, I did not understand this statement well. What does this divergence mean? I tried all that I could to find where was this divergence between my feeling, thinking and actions in all the above incidences but to no avail.

I took up the topic in our next meeting.

“Contradictory actions make you feel bad. But they are not the only actions to make you feel bad. There are some other types of actions that also make you feel bad”

“Inconvenience, difficulty and contradictions, all the three could make you feel bad and uneasy. Learn to differentiate between them”

I wondered why was this not clarified in the last meeting itself. But I also knew that the learning here is a gradual process and there is one thing at a time. Now the question is what is the difference between these three terms?

“Inconvenience is something which will make your feel uneasy for a while but leaves no scar on you”

I realised all the experiences that I narrated in the beginning were related to inconvenience. They did bother me for a while but did not have any lasting impact on me.

“Difficulty is something that makes you uneasy as it challenges you. It makes you stretch, and it can be overcome. And when you do that you grow, your abilities grow.”

I recollected a tough assignment given to me in the office. I was afraid. However, I worked hard, found out how it is to be done and finally I could do it well. In the end I had developed an ability to handle a new kind of assignments.

“If you always you do what you can, you do not grow. Difficulty challenges you and when you deal with it you grow. In fact, difficulties are the only way to grow.”

I realised that in school, every year there are new things, which are at first difficult for us. During the year we learn and develop abilities to deal with them. In the process we learn, and we grow. I wondered how the life at school would be if every year we had the syllabus of only what we knew! We would learn nothing new.

“Contradiction is something that not only makes you feel bad but also leaves with a feeling of regret and betrayal. That is because your action was contrary to your deep feelings. This has a lasting impact.”

I realised why my getting wild at my mother the other day for the delay in giving me lunch box, made me feel bad and that feeling spoiled the mood for a long time. Why did I do it? I didn’t want to hurt her, but my selfish concern of getting late made me feel wild and I took out my anger on her without caring about her feelings.

Thus, some actions that make us feel bad may be irrelevant as they are mere inconvenience. Some actions that make us feel bad are good as they pose difficulty and that is the only way to grow. They should be welcome.

On other hand some actions make us feel bad and leave in us a sense of betrayal. There is a type of divide inside us. We seem to betray our deep feelings. We may have been thinking differently from our feelings and our actions may be altogether different. Thus, there is a divergence between our feeling, thinking and actions. These are the contradictory actions. They are harmful and we should be watchful about it.

Learn to differentiate between inconvenience, difficulty and contradiction. A new learning in my journey to become a better human being.

Continue reading more about Journey to becoming better human being part- 13