To free yourself from painful episodes, move on!

Unless you “allow” someone to hurt you emotionally, you will never suffer.

Facebook reminded me yesterday, December 29^th, that it was the fourth anniversary of a very painful incident in my Life. In the wee hours of that morning, after several rounds of drinks at a school reunion, I had prevented my chaddi-buddy from riding his two-wheeler back in a drunken state. Besides Vaani, I had a driver with me, so we offered to drop my friend home. He refused to take our advice and rode away. However, at the kerbside outside the club, where we had met, he was stopped by the cops. I saw him trying to deal with the cops. So I got down from the car and implored the cops not to allow him to drive back home in that state. The cops seized his vehicle. My friend slapped me in a rage of fury. And grumpily took an auto-rickshaw home. Later that day, without naming him, I posted on Facebook that people of my generation, with teenaged and young adult children, must avoid drinking and driving; we must set an example. Some of my class fellows took objection to my post as a. it washing school group linen in public and b. I was interfering with the personal Life and choice of my school buddy. I tried explaining my point in the school group. But I was shouted down. It was this post that Facebook threw up yesterday as a memory!

My friend, whose vehicle had been impounded, pinged me the next day saying that he had spent Rs.3500/- on getting it released. He said my ‘over-zealousness’ had, apart from causing him emotional hurt, apart from intruding on his privacy, also cost him a princely sum. There was not much money I had, we were struggling as much then as we are today, but I reached him Rs.3500/- to compensate for his financial loss.

That was the last I interacted with my friend. We did meet here and there; he would barely acknowledge my presence or disapprovingly look away. He also unfriended me on Facebook.

When I looked back at the incident after I re-read my old Facebook post, I smiled to myself. What a powerful lesson this painful episode had taught me! Which is to move on, to emotionally free myself from an incident and its fallout. This is how I have remained without suffering although the pain from it all sometimes comes back trying to stir my emotions – as it happened when the Facebook post resurfaced yesterday!

My experience with my friend may appear unique. But it is not.

People often do things to us because of how they see Life. We see Life differently so we don’t quite appreciate or agree with what they are saying or doing. The best way to deal with such situations and people is to simply move on. It may not always be possible for us to forget whatever has happened, but we can surely forgive ourselves and others for what happened. The more you cling on to a hurt, an insult, an abuse, a betrayal, the longer you will suffer. Interestingly, unless you “allow” someone to hurt you emotionally, you will never suffer. If you treat people with the view that everyone is entitled to their opinions and behaviors, you will never be emotionally disturbed no matter what people do to you. I am sure my friend had reasons for the way he saw the episode and my involvement in it. And I have my reasons. Through this experience I have learnt that, no matter what a context is, you must never “wish” you were treated better. It is this wishing that causes your suffering. And never really the person or the event that has upset you.

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Making peace with painful memories

When painful memories arise in you, don’t avoid them. Don’t fear them. Let them come, you revisit them and, after seeing their futility, just let them go.

Memories are funny things. They just crop up – often randomly. Without any ostensible trigger. When they are about painful situations that you have been through, such memories can weigh you down for days and weeks on end at times. Because they are difficult to deal with, you will want to shut them away. But they refuse to budge. This is why painful memories linger on and continue to haunt you.

But there is an effective way to deal with them though.

When I am confronted with a painful memory, I let the event replay in my mind completely. I allow all the characters and emotions – the anger, grief, guilt, or any other feeling associated with the event – to play out and examine everything, and everyone, clearly. In such times, I play the role of an observer, a fly on the wall, who is watching the entire proceedings dispassionately – just as someone watches a movie. Every time I do this, I find myself detached from whatever has happened, even if the event has affected me deeply in the past, and, perhaps therefore, I am able to forgive the way I have been treated by someone or even by Life itself.

Memories are just a way of your mind dragging you to live clinging on to the past. And as long as you are living in the past, you cannot enjoy the present. But you can neither ask your mind to shut up, nor can you shut out memories. The only way you can deal with debilitating, painful, draining memories is for you to be aware and understand the futility of revisiting them.

Of what use is a memory of someone having betrayed you? Can you go back and change things? Of what use is a memory of the death of a loved one? Can you bring back that person from the dead? Does feeling guilty over a mistake you committed – however grave it may have been – ever going to help you undo what you did?

I have struggled too, for a long time, over memories of being called a cheat by members of my own family (I have recounted my painful experience in my Book, “Fall Like A Rose Petal – A father’s lessons on how to be happy and content while living without money”; Westland Books, August 2014). For months and years I grieved over trying to understand why my family failed to understand me. Then one day, during my mouna (silence period) session, it suddenly occurred to me that my pining for understanding from my family members was making no sense to them. I owed them money. And until I repaid them, the label of “cheat” was unlikely to be ripped off me. That’s when I concluded that revisiting the memory itself was futile. Unless I gave my family what they wanted – money – there was going to be no closure to the episode from their side. And since malicious words once spilled, erroneous labels once stuck, baseless opinions once expressed, cannot really be taken back, it would never matter, not to me, not any more, what my family thought of me – even after I repaid the money! That’s really when I understood how futile it is to revisit painful memories.

You too can make peace with your painful memories. Just examine them with detachment. And you will, pretty soon, realize how meaningless it is to hold on to them.