Stop Cribbing!
How do I start talking about things that have changed me so irrevocably? How do I start talking about people, some very special people, who have influenced me so much, who have been instrumental for making me a person that I feel immense love for and hence love them? And how do I explain those tiny corrections about perception of life, about attitude towards life, about actions in life that make me feel so alive, so utterly happy?
Just recently, while talking to someone I had met not so long ago, I was told to quit cribbing. This came as a bolt from dark. Me? Crib? Of course not! I don’t crib! Despite everything that I have had to face, I took pride in the fact that I don’t complain about life. What was he talking about? Was he out of his mind? But I knew he wasn’t. Perhaps he was just pulling my leg.
But no, he wasn’t. He repeated again – that I should stop cribbing.
This knocked the wind out of me. I thought over and still didn’t find that I cribbed. Then why did he say it? For some reason I went over and over what sounded like a very negative perception about me and still found it baseless. But this made me pay attention to my speech.
Everytime I heard myself talking about something that was not working in life, I paused to wonder if I really needed to say it aloud. And trust me, this confused the hell out of me. I mean, what do you do when you haven’t been well and someone asks how you have been. Do you give a standard reply that you were well or do you say that you could be better. And what if the person who asked you the question was a close friend. Does the answer remain the same? Or do you say how you really are feeling?
And then I realised it was just a judgment call. It was ok to tell a close friend that you weren’t well but to stop before you reach the stage of getting into the ‘gathering sympathy’ mode.
A simple pointer and I recognised the humongous change it brought within me. When I stopped before the ‘gathering sympathy’ mode, I was no longer bogged down by the problem. Instead, I started looking for solutions to the problem. I paid more attention to the resources I had at hand. I dug up into resources that I had no clue I ever possessed. And I paid greater attention to instincts that sometimes spoke about solutions that defied my own nature (or as I thought I was).
Do I still crib? Unfortunately at times I feel that perhaps I still did. Rarely – but still. Damn! :-(
Just recently, while talking to someone I had met not so long ago, I was told to quit cribbing. This came as a bolt from dark. Me? Crib? Of course not! I don’t crib! Despite everything that I have had to face, I took pride in the fact that I don’t complain about life. What was he talking about? Was he out of his mind? But I knew he wasn’t. Perhaps he was just pulling my leg.
But no, he wasn’t. He repeated again – that I should stop cribbing.
This knocked the wind out of me. I thought over and still didn’t find that I cribbed. Then why did he say it? For some reason I went over and over what sounded like a very negative perception about me and still found it baseless. But this made me pay attention to my speech.
Everytime I heard myself talking about something that was not working in life, I paused to wonder if I really needed to say it aloud. And trust me, this confused the hell out of me. I mean, what do you do when you haven’t been well and someone asks how you have been. Do you give a standard reply that you were well or do you say that you could be better. And what if the person who asked you the question was a close friend. Does the answer remain the same? Or do you say how you really are feeling?
And then I realised it was just a judgment call. It was ok to tell a close friend that you weren’t well but to stop before you reach the stage of getting into the ‘gathering sympathy’ mode.
A simple pointer and I recognised the humongous change it brought within me. When I stopped before the ‘gathering sympathy’ mode, I was no longer bogged down by the problem. Instead, I started looking for solutions to the problem. I paid more attention to the resources I had at hand. I dug up into resources that I had no clue I ever possessed. And I paid greater attention to instincts that sometimes spoke about solutions that defied my own nature (or as I thought I was).
Do I still crib? Unfortunately at times I feel that perhaps I still did. Rarely – but still. Damn! :-(
blogged by Asmita at 8:11 pm
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