I came to a strange realization this week while talking to a friend of mine going through a difficult time in life, and they consistently blaming themselves for the problems that they faced. I felt like that was too hard of a conclusion.
I thought back to the movie Aladdin, and remembered the three limitations that Genie placed on his ability to grant wishes:
1. Can’t wish for more wishes
2. Can’t make anyone fall in love.
3. Can’t bring anyone back from the dead.
I looked at these statements and extrapolated their meaning into a more metaphorical context. It’s a bit simplistic, I know, but the fact that these subtle understandings have been present in my life since I was a 2 year old in the 1990s still blew my mind:
1. In our lives we have limited resources, the most notable of which is time. We have to make decisions on how we spend our lives, and where we use the time that we have left. Are we going to be workaholics or lazy bums? Or somewhere in between? Are we going to have a career where we’re constantly looking forward to the weekend or where everyday is an unforeseen adventure? One way of living isn’t intrinsically better than the other, and we naturally look for balances in these things. There are pros and cons to every decision we make in our lives, but we can’t always have the best of both (or more) worlds. We have to make the best of what we’ve got.
2. We can’t really change the way other people feel about much anything; the way they feel about us, the way they feel about politics or religion. The most that we can do is be polite in an interview, not be assholes to our friends, rationalize and explain the issues that our important to us in a way that other people can relate to. A single memory lapse in picking up dry cleaning for a significant other isn’t the factor that makes them fall out of love with you. To an extent, I don’t really believe that we can control our thoughts and emotions; we can only control our actions corresponding to them. I have trouble sleeping at night because I think of death and eternity, always. There’s not a lot I can do to “force” myself to think of bunnies and rainbows instead, just like there’s not a lot you can do to “force” yourself to love another person if you really don’t feel it anymore.
3. This one is really direct and a little cliche, I feel, but I suppose we can expect this from a children’s movie. We can’t change the past. We can’t change the things we’ve said or done and we can’t bring back people who have left from our lives. The only thing we can do is take lessons we’ve learned from mistakes and use them in our future. Whether we plan for it or otherwise.
Sometimes I wish that my younger self had made these realizations sooner.
