Make an Estimate of Your Extraordinary Circumstances
Framework of Issues
Still there persists a major challenge posed by the specific circumstances you are in. Remember, goal-setting remains directly proportional to the nature and type of your circumstances you have to face willingly or unwillingly. So a vital issue is to make a correct assessment of the extraordinary circumstances you are in.
First understand, what is ‘extraordinary’ in your circumstances? It is important to ask this, because we are the part of a post-wars protected/ insured world where stability is the only value. And, another reason is that our parents work day and night to supply us with everyday needs and wants. And, in case, if we are adults and are government servants, our jobs remain fully protected. This makes us mistakenly perceive that as if we have no extraordinary circumstances to be faced.
It needs to be understood that the extraordinary circumstances doesn’t necessarily mean that a person is lacking in resources or he/she has to go through extremely rough conditions in the sustenance of life. Obviously, the case of this person indicates that he/she will have to face serious challenges to explore and enrich his/her abilities to cope with such extraordinary circumstances. But if everything is provided to you, this also constitutes a big challenge that how do you fight with the real risk of being passive, slowed down and thus suffer from stagnation. This is obvious a greater challenge than that of the shortage of resources because when everything is provided, men and women can never experience the anguish of soul and the thirst of their intellect, the satiation of which demand them to learn at least the virtues of determination, patience and constant labor. Hence, the person whether having all things or lacking in many things of his needs may equally face the extraordinary circumstances.
Exercise
To make a correct assessment of your circumstances, it is important to locate the number of opportunities and risks as well as available resources. This calculation should be comprehensive, including both the open as well as hidden opportunities and risks. It is also important that you should be at the same time aware of your potential/ capabilities to respond to these opportunities and risks. So you are needed to enlist all these items carefully.
Now, you are needed to chalk out a policy or a methodology or a set by step plan to enhance these opportunities or to reduce the risks to the minimum. Although this appears to be a common sense approach that each one would do the same in the similar circumstances, yet due to hurry, impatience, love for domination and luxury etc. found in human nature, men and women often tend to forget the need of preparing a policy or a plan to enhance the available opportunities and to reduce the possible risks. Rather, they find themselves bound to do as per the compulsions imposed by their circumstances. In return, their behavior is found to be determined by their circumstances: they aren’t the in charge of their circumstances but it is reverse: circumstances are controlling them. This indicates the decline of self-discovery to which a person can eventually reach.
The impact of circumstances in your life actually reflects the impact of the society or surrounding world in shaping what you are. So compare your aspiration/ ambitions with those of prevailing in society and then in the light of this comparison, put this question to yourself: Am I merely doing to meet the expectations of my family/ society about me? And, in the course of satisfying expectations of others, I too have some expectations which make me define the chief momentum/ aspirations of my life. It raises the question: Am I the mere mimic, the whole struggle of whom is nothing but to copy others? This will be a wonderful discovery to know the aspirations/ambitions over which you are proud of aren’t genuinely yours but given by your family and society. How strange it is that what is in your head and you hold it precious consuming your life, time and efforts doesn’t belong to you!
Actually, there is need to view both sides of it: positive and negative. The positive is that you keep bearing all the hardships and panic with a smiling face because of your inherent wish to be approved by others. This approval-seeking is important since it is the source of relationships, over which your sustenance of life—power and wealth depends. The vital importance of relationships is obvious, but these can never be allowed to enslave us. This shows the immediate importance of understanding the negative side of approval-seeking too. This occurs when that approval-seeking becomes the source of creating a mind-set which teaches you to keep ignoring/ rejecting the observation of genuine truth/ beauty (that is the part of your genuine interests linked with the world Hereafter) in the practical life matters, earning power and wealth for you. Even we think that the too much power and wealth is not necessary but we not only justify it and even race for it on the basis that it is the source of that approval-seeking. For example, you will find that the passion of being wealthy even for the sake of welfare is the part of that approval-seeking. But if it is thought carefully, you don’t find any reason to justify in any way.
Further, in the light of comparison between the set of aspirations and ambitions given by your family/society and those of yours, go on to carefully sort out the positive sets of aspirations/ambitions from those of negatives. This will help you to assess the effects of your circumstances in shaping the main currents of your personality. Also examine the criterion which is in your mind on the question of sorting out positive from negative. Do you think and find that is it really a helpful criterion? By examining this criterion, you can also calculate the limits of the observance of morality on your part?. All that will help expose that how much you are being shaped/ controlled by your circumstances?
Your worldview and the extraordinary circumstances remain interconnected. So ask yourself: Is the world a difficult place to live in? What the various threats and opportunities in it? Who are your friends as well as foes? Do you find courage and confidence enough to tackle both? What is your identity as individual or as a nation? Are you proud of your identity in both roles? All of these and similar questions are better likely to give you a fair estimate of the extraordinary circumstances.
