Your RESPONSE during Calamities is Your CHARACTER

1990th BLOG POST

We generally talk about a person’s character and we associate him with a certain kind of persona. Traditionally, in India, defining someone’s character included how one behaved socially in terms of their interaction with another gender. If a person is devoted to only one person, he/she was termed to be of good character whereas if someone had multiple relationships either at a time or in series, the person was meant to be of bad character. Similarly, anyone having any kind of relationship before marriage was termed as having a bad character – just for this reason itself. This is quite weird in many aspects as you never know what a person is going on in their personal life to understand why did they have to go through multiple relationships in their life.

 

But in modern culture, when we talk about someone’s character, it is not defined by this at all. We have given the liberty to the person of choosing their partner for themselves and end up having multiple break-ups too. Very few people are judgmental about this anymore. Now, there is a different problem altogether where we find ourselves and people around us going through mental health issues a lot. We realize someone who was very polite turning into an aggressive person. We observe a patient person turning into an impatient and rough personality. We find an extrovert turning into an introvert and vice-versa. This happens when a person is generally going through a tough situation or after a big trauma that they have undergone in their life.

 

This means that somewhere a person’s normal approach of thinking changes due to the bad experiences and he/she starts behaving differently and can’t retain their original character or sometimes, don’t remember it anymore. This shift happens due to frustration as one is not getting the results and it’s the irritation that a person tries throwing upon everyone. This is a kind of destructive mindset. So, it happens even when a talkative person goes silence. It is also done out of the same reason which then becomes problematic for everyone around as the guesswork begins about why the person is behaving weirdly or silently.

 

Secondly, a person also ends up tweaking their character because they feel that their basic character couldn’t fetch the desired happiness so maybe changing our ways of dealing with people will help us find some sanity. This becomes more worrisome as people stop identifying with you at all. They are unable to understand if the earlier version of yours was fake or this one is. Once you start behaving in a newly way, you start feeling validated by yourself and you wish to continue like this – it’s only mental state of yours which brings you back to your real self as it becomes normal and healthy again.

 

It is very necessary for us to maintain our character in the tough times. It is during this period that people generally get to know about you. How you would be reacting and responding to the situations tells about your capability of handling things even when you are not in your proper mindset. People start acknowledging your character and you earn the respect of being a person who can handle things as swiftly as you would have done in your good days. It is said that you are defined by how you react in your bad days than good days. But what we do is – we focus on ourselves when everything is okay and the moment things start getting bad, we think we have got a certificate to be anything and we would be understood. Well, that’s the biggest mistake we do.

 

Your haters will enjoy seeing you over-reacting to things. And they also get irritated when they find that you are not succumbing to the pressure but being the same matured person even in tough situations. They’ll even try provoking you but this is the time to remain sane and think of every action you do twice because you know you are not having mentally good days. This realization should be there before anything to maintain your character otherwise people don’t even realize or agree that there’s something wrong with them. First acknowledge that and then try maintaining your character, values, virtues and integrity the way you would have done anyway. Let your haters call you fake or bullshit or whatever they wish to call- you should be knowing who you are and when everything will end – your well-wishers as well as your haters will realize the kind of true person and great character you are. Just let the phase end for your mind to respect you for how you handled it when it wasn’t allowing you to handle yourself. Wait for that day. 😊

 

P.S.: In the end, I also acknowledge and understand that sometimes mental conditions take you to extreme end where you don’t know what to do and how to do. That’s a situation completely out of your hands hence it’s fine to falter during such uncontrollable times.

 

Thanks.

 

WRITING BUDDHA