Family Matters (Tai Chen Yu 17)

There are times when family affairs disappoint you. On page 79 ‘Outside the Box’, there are four suggestions on how to handle disappointment. What do you think of each suggestion? If you do not have issues that are family related (include the wider family, adoptive family, guardian), consider other disappointments in your life with other people who are supposedly close to you.

For the first suggestion, I feel that it is a rather good suggestion, as when you are feeling down, it is important that you have a distraction from that certain thing and not ponder upon it too much and just get on with life and not letting it affect you too much. Just accept the reality and forget about it already. Also, in order to completely forget about a matter, you would need a distraction to keep your mind off it and not take it too serious and hard to the heart which is exactly what was suggested.

For the second suggestion, I would have to beg to differ, as although that it is important that you not let the matter get to you too much, if a person starts thinking too much about all this 'positive' thoughts, the thoughts would probably not but really down to Earth nor realistic, and it would lead to fantasy thoughts, and when they would be engrossed in that ideal world that they had created and they will have many delusional thoughts and forget that they are all living in the real world and cannot get back on their feet to face society. Also, whats so good about your parents dying/divorcing?

I agree a lot with the third suggestion, as I feel that everybody should just grow up and face the fact that all this feelings are part and parcel of life and every human being would experience and encounter such feelings and there would be more to come in future. Also, such because of a minor setback in life doesn't mean that all is lost and they must all know that many people would also experience all this disappointment and they should all face up to reality and not cower in that shell they created.

For the fourth suggestion, I feel that its rather important to have a outlet to vent out the bottled up feelings and not keep it to oneself. Also, venting of feelings cannot be too extreme, to the extent of cutting wrists, and the person trying to commit suicide. There are many outlets to vent feelings and some examples are games, sports, etc.

For the fifth suggestion, I would also agree that it should be implemented when you are disappointed as in life, its the important things that actually matter so if someone thinks that they have failed in life or something, I think that they can get over the problem by reflecting everyday before they go to sleep about the happenings during the day and resolve the problem by pondering on their shortcomings and thinking about how to improve on that certain area.