From hopelessness and disappointment to the great and extraordinary
Turn lead into gold. This was the basis of alchemy, transforming a dense, gray and heavy metal into a noble, pure and beautiful metal. And while the alchemists did and experienced a lot to find this, and the elixir that could transform gold as desired, the metaphor is about to explain the art of living and understand how a feeling or a hard, opaque and heavy experience can become something really great and extraordinary.
The despair and disappointment are feelings that can be judged as "bad." And indeed, when we have suffered, they certainly make life look gray, cloudy and even suspicious. We have no confidence, lose hope and things seem to not be what you expected or wanted. These feelings are easy to get, especially in a world where sometimes things do not seem to be what we want, and there is violence and injustice, disease, lack of resources and many things and people that cause there are fewer trees, less species, and the world seem more parsimonious and aggressive, poor and insensitive.
While despair and disappointment can be the effect of what happens to ourselves or the world, they may be feelings that guide us to understand something greater and deeper in life.
Feelings and ways of seeing life
The feelings and emotions are closely related to the way how we see and understand life. Our understanding is closely related to the experiences and knowledge we have accepted as truth. How you feel life reveals our thinking. What we think, we feel. If we think something is "bad" that "should not be" or it is "wrong", etc., then you will feel rejection, disagreement, etc. And if we keep those feelings of discomfort or disapproval for a certain time, and we don’t find solutions to this, very soon we will feel disappointment, despair and discouragement.
Why do we feel disappointment and rejection?
Because we cannot modify or transform reality into what we want. When we cannot change the conditions that hurt us or make us feel limited, we do not know how to fill our needs and get rid of the experiences that make us feel decadent, trapped, confused, and more. Then we begin to feel a lot of frustration, which over time take off the desire to be here. And then we feel anxiety, fear and hopeless.
How to transform the disappointment and despair in an extraordinary feeling?
Learning new ways of seeing and understanding life. Who does not enjoy the game of life, obviously doesn’t not want to play or be here. But also who does not know how to play the game of life, cannot enjoy it a lot.
If a great and fascinating game was given to us, but we do not read the instructions and do not know how to play, great things that the game makes are wasted. And then the game will become a simple chatter on the roof of our houses. Perhaps we will think that life was just a useless game and was not a big deal as some said. But in truth, what happened is that we never had the real effort to make sense or know it well.
To understand life and enjoy its magical mazes, we should begin to understand the way how we see life and enlarge our vision. For this, we would have to gradually get closer finding out more of us, to understand ourselves as individuals is the magic in this life, there are a lot of hidden thing which are not so evident, because are hidden in the furnace of the magic that lies within us.
Two principles to begin a real transformation
Change the world and the people around us, is somehow impossible. Things do not change if we do not start by making the change from inside. In addition, we should note that each person has the right to choose the ways on how to live or how to want to be. That if we disagree, is something else. But on this planet, the sun goes down in all directions. To say that something is bad or wrong here, would be selfish, and why not? If everyone has the right to learn from their mistakes and experiences.
When I am fighting against the tide to change something, I'm trying to fit the ideal life in which I believe. And although this may in some way serve to push certain processes of creation, it is very draining. All life will be in a continuous struggle: the ideal against reality. And this won’t let me concentrate on the present, enjoy it, I’m into an ideal time, waiting for something to happen, then I will be right or happy, I'm distracted by criticism and reproaches not only by others but by myself.
Living a life with this stress or emotional rigidity sooner or later will exhaust my faith, my hope, because life does not really change. Life is what it is. Continually judging and reproving it won’t allow me to show what I am. Accommodate everyone "in their place" does not allow me to enjoy life, love myself and get knowledge.
If you are hopeless or disappointed, maybe it's time to stop looking outward the past or toward to the future. Stop focusing on what you want and you do not like, and focus your attention on understand yourself better, to learn from what you have lived, to stop criticizing, and comparing yourself to be in a constant competition between "good" and "bad" . Nothing is really good or bad. Unless you admit it. But try to start admitting that all things are blessings, "bad things" are a push or motor to get close to the greatness that is inside you.