Story of two grannies

This is a story of two grannies who had gone through similar hardship in life. I met them a while back and they both shared the following bad experiences:

• Both of them were orphaned at a very young age, and both were adopted.
• Both of them married an alcoholic, and had difficult marriages
• Both of them had disrespectful and unfilial children
• Both of them had kidney failure and had to go through painful dialysis

There could however be no bigger contrast in how they viewed life.

The first lady looked at life as a blessing and as she had gone through all the adversities when she was younger.

She felt that her life was never better and she was at a much better place now.

She was also a volunteer worker for an NGO helping the less fortunate ones.

The 2nd lady was however outrageous when we discussed her past. She blamed her sons and cursed her daughters in law. She was angry with God because he was unfair to her.

Although this lady was also part of the same NGO, she was not a volunteer but a patient suffering from clinical depression disorder.

What hit me the most was the stark difference in their facial expression and the vibes they sent out, although both suffered similar misfortunes in life.

As the first lady had let go of the distress and set herself free from the past, she left a peaceful and kind impression upon us. People like to be near her as she was very approachable and she carried herself with dignity and grace.

The depressed lady however still burried all her pain and burden from the past within her; she was very critical, aggressive and violent. People avoided her at all cost and she looked like a devil at times.

I sincerely had deep sympathy for her as she had gone through a hard life. However, she had to relive those painful but long gone miseries every day, and she was not willing to let go of those painful memories. With that, she was torturing herself daily with all the awful bygones.

Perhaps, there are just too many irreversible grief and regrets in life. Perhaps we feel so sorry for ourselves that we cry our lung out in those lonely nights. We damn the world, as this is such an insufferable hell.

But, we ought to know that we are the only one person who can release us from that living hell. No one else can help us.

There are just too many baggages in life, we can choose to carry them wherever we go, or we can choose to put them down gracefully and move on.

Whether or not we want to let go of these baggages can decide our future; it makes the difference of whether we continuously live a painful life, or turn over a new leaf and live in happiness.

The only way to end those bad dreams, is to wake up.

The only way to live happily, is to let go.

---

Related Article:

• Waking Up

This post has been translated from an article I read from Facebook. Please excuse my poor attempt in translating and if you would like to read the original post, you can get it here.