Carry Your Sun With You

Fables and tiny tales are often guides to deep psychological truths. A knowledge of some basic psychological truths is necessary to function well in any sphere of life, professional or personal. Professional spaces and work culture often demand not just skill-sets, competence and experience but also the supposedly right mindset in order to acquire those very skill-sets, competence and experience.

We came across one such fable which reveals a deep psychological truth. So, without further ado, let us delve into it.

One day, the sun and the cave struck up a conversation, where they talked about how the one had never been in the other’s place, and how they were curious to see what kind of surroundings and environment each witnessed. The sun had no idea what ‘dark’ meant and the cave did not understand what ‘light and clear’ meant.

They decided to change places for once. The cave changed places with the sun and said, ‘Oh, this is beyond beautiful; now come and see where I have been living.’ And thus, the sun went down to cave’s place as well. What the sun noticed, based on the response is something to ponder over:

‘I do not see any difference.’

The thing is, when the sun went down, it took its light along with it and thus even the darkest corners were illuminated. The darkness of the cave didn’t matter- it was just by the virtue of being the illuminated sun that the negativity, the darkness, the hollowness made to cast away.

We have a lesson or two learn from this little fable.

There are times when things just seem to be going downhill and it seems that our mind just knows how things are going to turn out, and mostly they are not pleasant. We end up working on self-fulfilling prophecies. We miss the alarm, miss the bus and thus reach work late, and we think our rest of the day is ruined. We notice what we think is a look of disappointment on our senior’s face and we know we are far away from that promotion. ?But what if we had the mindset to turn the rest of the day around and put our own missed alarm behind us? After all, reaching late doesn’t necessarily mean we have to ruin the rest of our day? Why let two hours ruin the remaining twenty hours? What if what we thought we noticed on our senior’s face was not a look of disappointment but something else? What if we just simply asked our senior if they think we should be working on something instead of overthinking ourselves into a negativity mindset, sinking deeper into the abyss?

The point is that with little detours in our thinking, we can create our own heaven and hell. Heaven and hell are what our mind makes up around us. When we are full of negativity, fear and doubt, we become the cave. When we can be the light ourselves, finding blessings in the tiniest of things, even the negative situations will turn out not-so-negative eventually. The point is to carry your sun within you, so there won’t be darkness anywhere. Each one of us has a sun within us; it is a matter of finding out.

Research also tells us a similar thing, in a more scientific manner. An article by Psychology Today (link) gives us two crucial insights along the lines of creating our own heaven and hell:

·???????The stories we tell ourselves about our abilities change the way we interact with our emotions when we face challenges.

·???????Our emotion mindsets are important for how we interpret failure.

?

When we believe that we can change a bad situation for the better, we will find ways, no matter what, to indeed try to change the situation for the better. The signal that we are in control of how we perceive and handle the situation is what enables us to overturn negative situations. The way we ‘frame’ our failures and our willingness to handle and work around our emotions is a big step in actually handling them well.

Isn’t this along the similar lines of creating our own heaven and hell? Being our own light and lamp?

Indeed, the lessons of the upcoming festival of Diwali are also along similar lines: no matter how much darkness surrounds us, the diyas will inevitably light up the place. Not only will the gentle flame light up the individual diya, it will also light up the other unlit diyas around as well.

We have the power to create our own heaven and hell, we have the power to light up the diyas around us!

References:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-science-feeling/202010/the-power-emotion-mindsets