I'm going to attempt to put into writing my thoughts about my life the past couple of years, what has driven me to stay silent when speaking up would have been a good thing, why sometimes silence is a temporary answer to a baffling situation and why speaking up is painful.
I've gone through a transformation, no doubt about that. I've come up from a somewhat difficult childhood to a point in my life where my day to day struggle to function as a responsible adult isn't as difficult as it used to be.
I've written before about my belief that I have been harmed by eating a Standard American Diet (SAD for short). I've written that I believe a large part of that harm was caused through the consumption of wheat products. It's hard to quantify how much of an impact diet played in the decisions that I've made but it's easy for me to see that what I lived with before is different from what I live with now. Though some of the traits I've learned over the years have stuck with me.
Personality wise, I have stayed very similar to what I have always been; determined, studious, kind... perhaps a bit too kind. What has kept my silence has been a desire to be kind.
In a way silence is a form of protection. People make assumptions of their own and if they are good you benefit, if they are wrong you at least know that they are wrong and move forward regardless of how they view you. In a way silence is kind. You refuse to throw peoples faults in their faces, you forebear to speak until they are in a better frame of mind. But in some ways kindness is suffocating and killing. Refusing to speak up means that you swallow the hurt and pain. It requires a certain amount of your soul to forebear and speak later. It can make someone strong, or it can slowly deteriorate and kill a free spirit and independent will.
In some ways I'm afraid to speak up, especially when I believe that the other persons reaction to my words will be negative. I'm afraid to lose love, I have lost love and it's painful. But it isn't as painful as having to live with a lie, when it means giving up self-respect and dignity. It isn't as painful as not standing up for my daughter and my sister when I had to... nor is it as painful as what would have happened in Ajey's family and in mine if I had married him. In his case, his sister could have lost a chance to marry well, his parents would have lost their son to America and would have lost his support for their business. Else I would have had to give up my life here in America to move there. My children would have lost home and family and would have been in a state of confusion. I spoke up and I had to let go of love and friendship.
When I spoke up I did the right thing. There were so many reasons why I wasn't ready to keep going with such a serious and difficult relationship. So many things that I've been able to accomplish for my kids, my home and myself that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. Hopefully I will come around to being the person I am meant to be.
Some quotes about "Thoughts"
“Yes, I was infatuated with you: I am still. No one has ever heightened such a keen capacity of physical sensation in me. I cut you out because I couldn't stand being a passing fancy. Before I give my body, I must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams. And you weren't having any of those.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
“There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under the jurisdiction. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I can read and eat and study. I can choose how I'm going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life-whether I will see them as curses or opportunities. I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert
“Sometimes, I sit alone under the stars
and think of the galaxies inside my
heart, and truly wonder if anyone will
ever want to make sense of all that
I am.”
― Christopher Poindexter
“There are so many things that demand to be said. Where did you go? Do you ever think about me? You've ruined me. Are you okay? But of course, I can't say any of that.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went
“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“The universe doesn’t give you what you ask for with your thoughts - it gives you what you demand with your actions.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
“Sometimes we have thoughts that even we don’t understand. Thoughts that aren’t even true—that aren’t really how we feel—but they’re running through our heads anyway because they’re interesting to think about.
If you could hear other people’s thoughts, you’d overhear things that are true as well as things that are completely random. And you wouldn’t know one from the other. It’d drive you insane. What’s true? What’s not? A million ideas, but what do they mean?”
― Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why
“The Yogic sages say that all the pain of a human life is caused by words, as is all the joy. We create words to define our experience and those words bring attendant emotions that jerk us around like dogs on a leash. We get seduced by our own mantras (I'm a failure... I'm lonely... I'm a failure... I'm lonely...) and we become monuments to them. To stop talking for a while, then, is to attempt to strip away the power of words, to stop choking ourselves with words, to liberate ourselves from our suffocating mantras.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
“We experience ourselves our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.”
― Albert Einstein
“You've never lived what you are thinking, and that isn't good. Only the ideas we actually live are of any value.”
― Hermann Hesse
“I don't know, I don't want to talk as much. (...) It's nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one's heart, like treasures. I don't like to have them laughed at or wondered over.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
“One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts—just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live... surprising things can happen to any one who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place.
"Where you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
I've gone through a transformation, no doubt about that. I've come up from a somewhat difficult childhood to a point in my life where my day to day struggle to function as a responsible adult isn't as difficult as it used to be.
I've written before about my belief that I have been harmed by eating a Standard American Diet (SAD for short). I've written that I believe a large part of that harm was caused through the consumption of wheat products. It's hard to quantify how much of an impact diet played in the decisions that I've made but it's easy for me to see that what I lived with before is different from what I live with now. Though some of the traits I've learned over the years have stuck with me.
Personality wise, I have stayed very similar to what I have always been; determined, studious, kind... perhaps a bit too kind. What has kept my silence has been a desire to be kind.
In a way silence is a form of protection. People make assumptions of their own and if they are good you benefit, if they are wrong you at least know that they are wrong and move forward regardless of how they view you. In a way silence is kind. You refuse to throw peoples faults in their faces, you forebear to speak until they are in a better frame of mind. But in some ways kindness is suffocating and killing. Refusing to speak up means that you swallow the hurt and pain. It requires a certain amount of your soul to forebear and speak later. It can make someone strong, or it can slowly deteriorate and kill a free spirit and independent will.
In some ways I'm afraid to speak up, especially when I believe that the other persons reaction to my words will be negative. I'm afraid to lose love, I have lost love and it's painful. But it isn't as painful as having to live with a lie, when it means giving up self-respect and dignity. It isn't as painful as not standing up for my daughter and my sister when I had to... nor is it as painful as what would have happened in Ajey's family and in mine if I had married him. In his case, his sister could have lost a chance to marry well, his parents would have lost their son to America and would have lost his support for their business. Else I would have had to give up my life here in America to move there. My children would have lost home and family and would have been in a state of confusion. I spoke up and I had to let go of love and friendship.
When I spoke up I did the right thing. There were so many reasons why I wasn't ready to keep going with such a serious and difficult relationship. So many things that I've been able to accomplish for my kids, my home and myself that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. Hopefully I will come around to being the person I am meant to be.
Some quotes about "Thoughts"
“Yes, I was infatuated with you: I am still. No one has ever heightened such a keen capacity of physical sensation in me. I cut you out because I couldn't stand being a passing fancy. Before I give my body, I must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams. And you weren't having any of those.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
“There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under the jurisdiction. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I can read and eat and study. I can choose how I'm going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life-whether I will see them as curses or opportunities. I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert
“Sometimes, I sit alone under the stars
and think of the galaxies inside my
heart, and truly wonder if anyone will
ever want to make sense of all that
I am.”
― Christopher Poindexter
“There are so many things that demand to be said. Where did you go? Do you ever think about me? You've ruined me. Are you okay? But of course, I can't say any of that.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went
“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“The universe doesn’t give you what you ask for with your thoughts - it gives you what you demand with your actions.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
“Sometimes we have thoughts that even we don’t understand. Thoughts that aren’t even true—that aren’t really how we feel—but they’re running through our heads anyway because they’re interesting to think about.
If you could hear other people’s thoughts, you’d overhear things that are true as well as things that are completely random. And you wouldn’t know one from the other. It’d drive you insane. What’s true? What’s not? A million ideas, but what do they mean?”
― Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why
“The Yogic sages say that all the pain of a human life is caused by words, as is all the joy. We create words to define our experience and those words bring attendant emotions that jerk us around like dogs on a leash. We get seduced by our own mantras (I'm a failure... I'm lonely... I'm a failure... I'm lonely...) and we become monuments to them. To stop talking for a while, then, is to attempt to strip away the power of words, to stop choking ourselves with words, to liberate ourselves from our suffocating mantras.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
“We experience ourselves our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.”
― Albert Einstein
“You've never lived what you are thinking, and that isn't good. Only the ideas we actually live are of any value.”
― Hermann Hesse
“I don't know, I don't want to talk as much. (...) It's nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one's heart, like treasures. I don't like to have them laughed at or wondered over.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
“One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts—just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live... surprising things can happen to any one who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place.
"Where you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
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