The Most Futile Endeavour
If there is any effort that is most useless, it lies in trying to change someone- what they are, how they behave and what makes them what they are. You cannot change anyone else.
It’s been around six years since I started writing on this platform, my most pertinent theme in all my write ups has been focusing on yourself. No matter how cliche that sounds but there are many advantages of focusing on yourself. One of the advantages is that you waste no time in trying to change someone else but only yourself. With enough practice of this, you realise how difficult it is to change.
Your area of control of the capacity to change begins and ends at yourself and even that does not work well, you fail at changing yourself. How then do you believe that you can change someone else if despite knowing everything about yourself you are unable to change yourself?
We are shaped by the conditioning in the homes we grow up in, the cities we visit, the schools we have been to, the people we have interacted with, the siblings we have, the parents who nourish us and the friends we make. Once we have reached a certain age forming a full personality of ours having been through all this, this personality becomes a solid one. It becomes very difficult to change if not impossible. Just like we know about reflex physical actions in our lives which makes us immediately put our hand away when we touch a hot object, similar becomes the case with our emotional and cognitive responses. Our personality decides how we are going to behave as soon as we witness any trigger around us. That is something which is very difficult to change because unlike children who can be conditioned by training, older people are not very receptive to training.
One of my closest friends gifted me a book called The Forty Rules of Love, which unlike its title is a book closely related to Sufism. In it is a line, “She was going to make the mistake women have been making all their lives, thinking that using her love, she can change the man she loves.” It stayed with me for a long time. We tend to believe that we are capable of changing another person, when nothing could be farther from the truth. You need to accept people just the way they are, keep them close if you love their presence, and distance yourself if you don’t subscribe to their ideas and lifestyle.
While it is true that people change sometimes, but mostly they don’t want to, and even more often they do not. All of us have a deeply entrenched personality associated with us after years of experience. Nobody can possibly change that.
If that is the case, focusing on just yourself becomes utmost important. At least you can keep trying and with time, understand what is wrong with you and try to become the best version for yourself. Then there would also be no room for finding faults in another.
Kabir Das ji has rightly said, “Bura Jo dekhan main chala, bura na milya koi, jo dil khoja apna mujhse bura na koi.” which means I went out to look out for evil in others and could not find anyone evil. When I looked within myself, I found myself to be the most immoral.
So just focus on yourself and you can live a more peaceful life.
You may reach out to me at sdshivanidubey@gmail.com.
