What strategies do you use to cope with negative feelings?
The one particular unparalleled characteristic which makes us humans is our ability to have and experience a variety of feelings. All these feelings are essential in one way or another, but only when a certain amount of control is exercised over them.
Losing yourself to any particular feeling can bring in a whole set of trouble because then you begin to start losing sight of your immediate reality.
Our feelings are largely divided into being either positive or negative. While all of us do want to stay in the positive zone, if possible, forever, but that is not how things work. You will come across negative feelings more often than you want to and maybe more than the positive ones. I learned from my grandparents that it requires great strength and determination to keep yourself surrounded with positive feelings most of the time, a strength many like me lack.
There are several emotions which result in negative feelings, emotions such as sadness, fear, anger, jealousy or guilt. When these emotions linger on for a long time, they end up making us feel a certain kind of uneasiness, which if not attended to, may result in isolation or something more severe.
In my high school days, there was a classmate, his name was Akshaj Rawat. He had his way with spoken words and I would list him among the best communicators I have met in life.
Akshaj’s good communication skills made him popular among students and teachers alike. He had most friends, had the attention of most girls and teachers wouldn’t stop being pleased by him. What further intensified the fact that he was a good communicator was that he was pretty much average in every other thing, average in sports, studies, extracurricular activities and somehow it seemed the whole school was genuinely surprised when he failed and had to repeat a class.
Me and my friend Ibhan who were above average in studies and pretty much every other thing thought we always had an edge over Akshaj even though we may not be as popular.
Further in life, today Akshaj is in a good place not because of his own efforts but rather of his hard-working and capable wife. He is living abroad in a beautiful country, enjoying life without having to do anything professionally at all. Can it be called a good life? It depends upon the perception of people but I personally believe earning things out of your own hard work has a certain kind of positivity and sense of achievement associated with it.
So, am I affected in any manner by this life Akshaj is living? No, I did not even bother to find out what he was doing in life at all. But it did affect my friend Ibhan. Unlike me, Ibhan had taken the ‘having an edge’ over Akshaj a bit more seriously than I thought and he had carried that feeling right out of school.
Akshaj wasn’t making any considerable progress either academically or professionally, but one day after around eight years he posted a photograph of being abroad and when Ibhan saw it, he enquired around and he took it as his failure upon himself of not having a better life. In Ibhan’s mind, Akshaj had surpassed him by a large distance, and it was unacceptable
I myself am not bothered by such things, unless it’s a good story to be heard, I rarely pay attention to other things. But this time I had to pay attention because my friend was obsessed with this idea of making his living abroad and somehow in his mind, surpass Akshaj. He wouldn’t stop thinking about it and wasn’t at ease at all.
I tried to explain things to him; he had a wife and daughter by now; I asked him to focus on them and that life can be better in so many more ways than one. Either I failed to say it correctly or he failed to understand. He found a job abroad in an economically weaker country and went away leaving his wife and daughter behind. He succumbed to his negative feelings and no one could do anything about it.
I still talk to him and he tells me how much he regrets not listening to me or his wife and parents. Despite his best efforts he is unable to return back to the country and is often drowned in sadness of not being able to be there as his daughter grows.
As for myself, I have a bit of anger issues, but nothing that cannot be sorted by a good cup of coffee along with a good cookie and soft instrumental music.
Written by Anuran Chatterji
Early Morning Memories 
One response to “The Thoughts of Wrong Kind”
very well said! thanks so much for sharing!🙏🏼
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