Question Your Ideals

When we find ourselves entangled in the middle of demanding people and relationships, we often turn inwards and question the first thing we base most of our lives on -- our ideals. Isn't it funny how things on the outside drive us to look inwards? Most of the times, we pursue things without taking a good, hard look at them. We fail to evaluate the ways in which they could affect us.

 

Especially in times of in conflict, analyse things keeping in mind the ideals you'd previously set for yourself. This will put forth a much clearer perspective in terms of whether the conflict you're about to engage yourself in is really worth it or not! And whether the place that it will lead you to is really the place you want to be at.

 

The underlying idea of the ephemeral nature of our ideals can be explained really simply using a rather literal analogy. Remember the time in college when you finally ran out of clean t-shirts? The only thing left to do then was to choose the less 'smelly' one out of the ones that were used. At the time, you managed with whatever there was. But if given the chance, you'd never like to be in the same place again, wearing smelly clothes day after day.

 

What this implies is that human standards generally get lowered when faced with necessity. And more than half of the times that this happens, we fail to notice it! We assume that certain things are a must and run after them, forgetting everything else we'd previously decided for ourselves. Often, the pleasure that we seek is largely temporary and tends to dissipate within a short period of time.

 

The primary thing to do is to realise that our ideals are very relative and tend to shift easily. We compromise on them and later regret our decisions. Learn to question yourself about the decisions you take. In how many ways would they affect you? Where will you be once you go through with your decision? Is all this where you'd ideally like to be? If not, then don't go through with it.

 

Question and re-question yourself and your actions and compare them to your 'ideal' world. Likewise, any decisions that prevent you from reaching there shouldn't be opted for. It is undoubtedly the best and the fastest path of getting to where you really want to be!