How I channeled negative forces into positive ones

Some motivational writers suggest that one should forget and never disclose one’s horrible past experiences as they will dig up the covered woes in one’s heart and depress them terribly. In my opinion, I partially accept the idea. Through my experience, I come to realize that whatever difficulty we may have had in our past, the way we tackle them can make who we are today. In other words, we can learn a lot of guiding principles from our past. I had personal experience concerning how to channel negative forces into positive ones to be on the right track on our life journey.

When I was seven years of age, my father passed away, leaving bronchitis-prone mother with seven children as well as with a lot of debt. Three of my siblings had to drop out of school to learn to pursue other professions. Mother had to do a lot of odd but honest work to make ends meet. Whatever difficulty she would have, she always showed her smiling face to us. She withstood the life perils boldly without marrying again despite her youth. She lived her life solely for us, her beloved children. She always encouraged us to study hard by reciting her quote: “Look at the mirror for your beauty; you study hard for your life.” Therefore, we studied hard although I did not make as much exertion as the other siblings of mine.

Then there was a turning point of my life! There were some bullies in my class. They often teased me as I was shy and timid in their eyes. Whenever I was ridiculed, I was at a loss as to how I should have responded to the bullies. I was desperate when I came to think that I was bullied as I was a poor fatherless boy.

Sometimes, I wanted to respond violently to those teasing me. However, I knew well that I would be badly hurt if I fought against them since they were bigger and stronger than me. Therefore, I just swallowed my bitter feelings towards them. The more I seemed to tolerate, the more they teased me. The more they did so, the more stressful, annoyed and depressed I became. For a time, I could find no cure for my mental wounds.

One day, I got an idea! I came to think that excellence in education would be a way out of my present pitch of troubles as I knew well that they were very weak at their studies. My burning desire to beat them in the educational arena, my sole great hope of victory, had given me incessant flow of motivation to try my best in my studies. It definitely made me endowed with enough vigour and valour to march further bravely on my life journey.

As a result, I passed matriculation examination with flying colours and was able to join Yangon University of Education (then known as Yangon Institute of Education). The motivation which I gained from my desire to surpass the bullies has spurred me since the beginning of my high school days.

In retrospect, I have to admit that I hated those bullying me. I even happened to imagine that I would hit them hard with a stick. Nevertheless, I never reacted in such a violent manner. In fact, I channeled negative forces into positive ones! I feel very fortunate to have done so when I sometimes think of some bad people. From time to time, a palpitating question springs up in my mind: “What would I be now if I violently reacted to those bullying me out of intolerance?” Certainly, if I did so, I would just be a good-for-nothing guy, reacting as hot-headedly and violently as a stupid person does. I might not even pass the matriculation examination let alone holding degrees. Perhaps I would not live this long!

Now when I am an educated person myself, I really see those who bullied me as some of the great benefactors of my life. My gigantic resentment towards them has already gone with the past years as I can now forgive and forget their bad actions to me. I am also greatly indebted to one important person in my life. Whenever I think more deeply as to how and why I could make the right decision to study hard at that very time, I see my beloved mother. Her constant encouragement had overwhelmed me so deeply in one corner of my heart as to make me channel negative forces into positive ones indeed.

                                                                                    Zwe Thit (Rammarmray)

(ရန္ကုန္ပညာေရးတကၠသိုလ္ ႏွစ္လည္မဂၢဇင္း (၂၀၁၃-၂၀၁၄) တြင္ ေဖာ္ျပျပီးေသာ ေဆာင္းပါး ျဖစ္သည္။)