Proactivity, contrary to common belief, is not about initiative. It is about the freedom of choice, the opposite of reactivity. Instead of reacting to external factors, letting them govern your mind, being proactive puts you fully in charge of your mind.
This is the key to happiness. The only person in full control of one, is oneself. One can choose to be happy, one can choose to be sad. One can choose to keep his cool, or fly off at the mouth. One can sit in the corner and cry about his pathetic life, or be strong and do something about it.
The last few weeks had probably been the worst weeks of mine this year.
Last last wednesday was the second day of using a new phone which was a fake iphone. While transferring my music files into it DIRECTLY, the computer hanged, so I lost half of my work. I felt really pathetic at that time, and due to my frustrated mood, I dropped the phone and the LCD cracked.
On Thursday, I lost 20 dollars, or rather, the school saved 20 dollars, as my voucher from last year's book prize was expiring the next day. I wanted to spend it during lunch, but got held back by the teacher. By the time I went to the bookshop, it was closed.
By the way, it was Good Friday the next day, so there wasn't any school.
A week passed.
And then I was okay for that week or so, until Sunday.
Ben and I went to the library to study. It was extremely crowded there, so we took a seat in front of the window ledge, and started studying. Having just checked the time, I put my phone right in front of me. Out of a sudden this old man called us and said that we would get chased away if we sat there, and he asked us to sit on an empty sofa next to him. At that time, I obviously wasn't any psychic, so not bothering to think too much into his fallacious logic, we just went to do our work on the sofa.
Our work was spread out all over the sofa. It was a square one, and we had it to ourselves since there was not many others around. That old man didn't do much, but I have a tendency to associate a person's looks, actions and words to his character. After all, the eye is the window to the soul. He tried correcting some of my wrong chinese characters on my chinese homework, which gave me some pissed off feeling, like some kind of negative aura. Perhaps it was because I did not like to be disturbed, but it was also possible that it was a pure feeling of negativity.
I put down my chinese homework, and went to the other side of the sofa to join Ben studying cell biology. Skipping to the main point, when we were leaving, my phone which was under our stack of work disappeared, and considering that we looked high and low, the students on our right were studying without having left their places and already having a laptop and iphone, no one else having came or left, the disappearance of the old man and the way I didn't like him, I decided Murphy always wins, and we left.
In hope of any slim chance that the phone had grew legs and skuttled away from the sofa, we waited for around half an hour to ask the lost and found for any phone. At that time, all I wanted to do is focus my mind on my chemistry concept reviews, trying to do as much work as possible, as if it would make up for the loss...
Upon exiting the toilet, I had another revelation, my only copy of the music project was in there. I would now have to re do it for a second time (the last the computer hanged and I lost half my work). Reminding myself about freedom of choice of emotions, I told myself not to get so upset over materialistic losses.
Then to end it all, was yesterday. I was already feeling kind of moody on tuesday, as I was racking my mind on how to embark on my music project. Somehow during afternoon break, I starting thinking about how hopeless and warped the World is, and felt rather empty. To take my mind of things, redox titration for chemistry did not appear to have been as dull as I thought it would be. Unfortunately near the end of the lesson I was feeling dull enough and was not paying to particularly much attention, and as Eugene prepared two samples of vitamin C for titration, I put in the wrong chemicals for the first one and too much water for the second.
The caucasian guy came up towards me and said: "Well if you're just playing around and wasting chemical, you should just pack up and leave." I apologised and went to get some vitamin C for another preperation. The guy saw me and shouted, "What are you doing? Pack up and leave!"
That really put my off for a while and I was in no mood to argue, so I just went back to my seat and cut myself off from the rest of the world, feeling really angry with the guy.
Having had so many unfortunate events surging towards me, my proactive attitude did not seem to have time to catch up with the rate things are progressing at. This was all too much for me, so I went to the canteen to get a drink.
It doesn't require cliche things like 'thinking things over' and 'some quiet time by myself' to calm myself down. It just took a little time out sitting at the table, watching people come and go, and relax.
And when I felt ready to stand up and go home, I did, and felt a lot better.
I stood on the same spot looking at the rainwater flowing down the flyover while waiting for the bus.
I went for dinner outside and took a nice long bus ride home.
Time heals all wounds.
Today, I made a choice to leave aside spilled milk and be optimistic and happy.
I stormed into music class surging with confidence, ready to start the score notation from scratch and finish it by the end of the two hours. To my awesome relief, the files were still in my computer, untouched. I did not have to redo them after all.
