Thoughts On // 26.07.2020

Philosophy of Life

Reading the words, "What is your philosophy of life?", made me really think hard about what exactly is my philosophy in life and whether or not it was actually my philosophy or another person's philosophy which was instilled in me. I started wondering about things I've done in life and the experiences I've had, something which was constant with me, something I truly believed and I realized I did have a strong belief. It could very well be considered as a philosophy which is "don't judge people or things in general, based on what you have heard from someone else." I truly value and believe in this and try my best to remember this when certain difficult situations arise in life. 

Recently, I have been trying to have a spiritual awakening and find my path to God. Religious beliefs always play such an important role in a mundane's life. Religion influences us from when we are born and gives us a window of perception. I was born into a Christian family but I, personally, did not practice Christianity as much. I was brought up in a different city so, when I first visited my hometown in 2011, I had to attend a church. My family from there told me that I could not wear pants to the church because I was a girl and that was one of the rules of the church. I was deeply furious because I wanted to be comfortable and I questioned why I couldn't. As I got to meet more family members and other Christian families either from my hometown or from the city I was brought up in, they spoke about rules, things we couldn't do and things we had to do. I felt like I couldn't be Christian because the rules were so rigid and it felt like I would have to give up being open-minded and just follow a narrow path. I didn't try my best to get to know God through the Bible and questioned the Bible a lot without reading it and always wondered who wrote it and how was it passed down. So, instead of educating myself, I decided to turn to ignorance.  

I always truly believed that we had a creator or God and also believed in an afterlife but also reincarnation. I suddenly had an epiphany which was that I was not practising my philosophy. I had judged the religion of Christianity based on what others were telling me without getting to know it myself. Even though they would talk about the endless love that God has towards us and how he is a kind God but I still questioned why there were so many restrictions. 

Thus I realized, I needed to experience reading the Bible for myself and getting to know God through that. I am still in the beginning and slowly reading the Bible trying to gain enlightenment. A very close cousin of mine told me to keep a book near while I read it and if I have any questions to write them down. I asked my cousin a lot of questions and it really made reading the Bible clearer, although there are still many chapters to go. I realized that there is no right path as of now. In the Bible, it said Jesus came and washed away all our sins and God has forgiven us. However, in the very beginning, in the chapter of Genesis, I questioned why the tree of knowledge of good and evil was in the centre instead of the tree of life and why the tree of knowledge of good and evil was even created. My cousin and I discussed this and it was brought to light that maybe before we had eternal life, God wanted us to attain this knowledge but only when we were ready. 

So, it made me think of the idea that after Jesus had come and washed away our sins, maybe now God wants us to first gain this knowledge by living through our life and realizing the good and bad for ourselves through our experiences and then we attain eternal life. 

Going back to my philosophy, after I had started reading the Bible by myself and truly trying to understand but also question certain things. It made me build my faith. I still don't understand the part about the heavy rules which the church has or used to have. 

I am the kind of learner who learns through experiences. I cannot depend on textbooks and I hate any sort of by hearting system, it just isn't the way that I learn. I'm the kind who thinks that knowledge of skills is better which is why my philosophy plays such an important role in the way that I have been living my life. It has especially been so good to me when I was in school because that was the age where a lot of people would always talk behind another person's back based on things they have heard from other people and I tried my best to not listen to useless rumours and actually get to know the person first. However, I am of course no saint so there was a time when I had given in to such rumours and did not ask the other person whether it was true or not because I was butthurt by what I had heard. The things I had heard from other people were about what this friend had been saying, however, this friend and I had a huge fight before the rumours had started. A while later, I learnt that there were also rumours about me saying things about that friend but I never did and I had no courage to go speak out. Now since I have matured more and I had character development, I realized that I should have gone and spoken to the person instead of turning a blind eye. I had forgotten my philosophy then and I also lost a pretty good friend of that time. Through this experience, it made me realize how important my philosophy was and now I don't make as many mistakes because the philosophy I had instilled in myself played such a big role in my behaviour towards others and trying to understand first why certain people must behave the way that they do. 

In conclusion, everyone has certain philosophies that they follow while going through life. Sometimes these philosophies would clash or people would have the same philosophy. It has played such an important role in affecting our lives and conditioning the way in which we think, behave and act. To be really honest, if everybody in the world had the same philosophies, the world would just be like a single flavour of ice cream. We wouldn't be able to try or learn about the other different flavours and attain any other knowledge or discoveries.