Theological reflection is essential as it allows people to slow down and assess their lives. It allows them to weed out the negative elements of their lives so that they may live a better and more fulfilling life. Life experiences allow human beings to understand life which is important as it leads to the purpose of their life and their role in the world. My personal experiences have shaped me to become the person that I am today. There are a lot of things that can still be improved in my life and personality, however; I aim to become a better person every day. This has allowed me to become less judgmental and more tolerant towards other people, although; there is still room for improvement.
During the Covid-19 lockdown, I was feeling extremely depressed and it was also affecting the way I treated other people. I wanted to be around people and yet I disliked being in the company of people at the same time. Sometimes I felt that these people were not right for me and other times I felt that I was the problematic one. Then one day, one of my friends decided to watch a movie with me and I was not paying attention to it at first (it was in another language and had subtitles) but then a line caught my attention, “When you realize that the only person that you can change is you then you can know what was the problem and what was in your head.” This line affected me so much that I spent days reflecting upon it and the more I thought about it the more it made sense as being an optimistic person allows you to have a better opinion of others but if you are pessimistic then everyone seems like a problem. This experience of watching a movie led me to reflect upon my personality and the way it affected my perception of people.
We have different experiences all the time but there are only a few experiences that make us reflect upon our life and our view of life. Reflecting upon myself allowed me to change the negative aspect of my personality that made me perceive everything negatively including myself. Reflection allowed me to slow down, discern the reasons that were causing this behavior and eliminate it from my life. This helped me view things more positively which has led to more positive experiences in my life.
Another experience that I had was when I heard a stranger saying that “Not everything is about us as we are not the main character in everyone’s life apart from our own. The moment we understand this, we can stop blaming ourselves for the behavior of others.” This is true as there have been countless moments when the behavior of another has led me to believe that I was the problem. Understanding that other people have a life outside of our interaction with them and their experiences have shaped them to behave a certain way, can prevent us from blaming ourselves for their actions.
Every experience in life is going to shape us to have a certain personality but reflecting on those experiences allows us to change our perception of life. This change in perception, in turn, alters our future experiences giving more depth to our lives and making them worth living. A person does not need to understand theology to reflect upon their experiences rather they need to develop an understanding that their experiences have meaning and they need to understand these meanings to appreciate life.
