The society categorises behaviours into norms, vices and virtues but what how we individually categorise behaviours depends on us.
Change is constant and I can’t tell you I am exactly the same as I was a few years back. I have changed considerably, even acquiring some attributes I once considered not so acceptable. Change just happened, right?
But then, taking back the arms of time a little bit, I would remember someone matching up to me and telling me, “You are going to dropped this habit and take that one after a while” and I suddenly feel like, “what do you mean? Do you think I don’t know what I do?”.
But without letting out the reactions, I would just retract in silence and accept the challenge the huge challenge that has just been set before me.
Threats come to us almost every day of our lives and they come in different ways. Encounters of moral challenges can be some threats to your standards and beliefs. But what is the right way to respond to them?
How To Respond To Moral Threats
When threats come, the usual reaction is to back out in fear and/or anxiety. Even armless threats can be so potent to induce the same response of fear in people.
That was exactly how I felt when I was accosted with such a challenge, a usual mixed response of fear and challenge. But after that, what happens next?
When confronted by such challenges, I’ve met many people who would immediately bounce back to the person challenging them, directly saying they are going to prove them all wrong.
But you know what happened subsequently? They were found to do just the way it was predicted.
So what did they do wrong or what did the fail to do?
Keep Silent, But Be Proactive
Someone says you are not going to be the same way in the nearest future? Just keep silent but be proactive inside you. Remember, habits are the products of the mind that have been practised over and over again. You should rather do most of the fighting within and leave the outside reactions to whoever needs them because I am very sure you don’t.
Instead of the fight-backs, why don’t you strive to stay committed to maintaining the core values you consider rights as opposed to the ones society try to impose on you?
Verbally or physically confronting people who challenge you morally does not make any difference. What makes the difference is who you become years down the line.
How would you feel if you finally meet the people who confronted you some times past and they see that their prophecy that you emphatically rejected is true? I won’t answer that for you.
Change is a constant and you don’t know what you will become the next minute but you must be assertive enough to defend the values you believe in as much as you can without making it a show-off of power because it is actually beyond physical powers of the arms and the forearms.
Do Not Yield Easily Either
One of the reasons why people tell you who you would become ahead of time is to try to change you now. They want to direct the flow of your life the way theirs’ went but that’s not who you are! You are different, their mistakes do not have to be yours, you should actually learn from them never to repeat some of their flaws.
But people will always want you to take the path and learn for yourself. Only a few people will be kind enough to warn you ahead of the mistakes so that you can totally avoid them, especially when they were not fore-warned too.
Some people would just succumb to the pressures to change so easily that they instantaneously modify some values they once considered right and switch to the ones that were suggested a few moments earlier, in such a way as to make you think they just want to facilitate the process that would have occurred anyway. The only thing they did not know is that it does not have to go that way.
Give Them Some Hopes That They Are Not Badly Changed
The intent of people who brings moral threats may not always be to lure you into error. Sometimes, all they would want is to exonerate their guilty hearts for changing their previously held standards into newer once that somebody probably suggested too. They want to give reasons why they failed and attribute it to a natural law that catches up with everyone.
True, it is a natural law to change but if we leave change untamable, the whole world will soon turn into chaos.
So, just before you begin to condemn them, give them the succour they seek and assure them that they are not the extremes of the human species the world have got yet.
It’s Another Motivation To Be Strong
Like I already said, you must do more or the work inside you than outside. Take these challenges as another motivation to be strong, to assertively defend your values. At least, you’ve got one more person to prove wrong and the number keeps increasing by the day. That could be a source of your strength instead of weakness that it could be to some others.
If you do these, you would have been able to put your life into your own hands and not letting people or society dictate for you how it goes.
There Is Always Still Room For Positive Learning
If you think you are already perfect enough not to improve, you are probably the biggest liar and the second biggest liar at the same time. Live your life your best way but be ready to evaluate and modify when necessary. Change is a constant and learning is a continuous process.
