Your worst battle is between what you know and what you feel

There’s this thing about quotes and proverbs. Some of them just strike you as profound at first sight. But on most, you have to think a bit to find the meaning in them. The title of this post is a quote I saw in the WhatsApp story of a friend, and I thought a lot about it. I would love to share my findings.

I think that when we are young, we often think that our battles are against forces that are external to us. You are trying to pursue your passion, but your parents, or your teachers, or your friends are standing in your way. You think that if only all the conditions could somehow come in your favor, you will be able to do what you're destined to do.

But I think that this pandemic, and the lockdown that followed it, has shown a lot of us how most of the forces stopping us from acting come from within us. For instance, a lot of us attributed our lack of exercise to our busy lifestyles. Most of us living in metro cities wasted hours every day commuting to work and back. We told ourselves, if only I could save these two hours every day, I could put it towards exercising, or reading, or some other activity that would help me improve as a person.

The lockdown gave us all back those hours. We no longer had to go to work. But did we make good use of it? I know that at least I didn’t. I always thought that all I needed was time, and I could do better. I was wrong.

The biggest conflict that we face is with our own feelings. When you know you want to do the right thing but still are not able to get yourself to do it. That’s the conflict you need to resolve first. Everything external will feel a lot more manageable compared to it.