Someone very close to me just reminded me that it is so important to not lose one's perspective. I am starting to think that perspective is the key to a lot of the doors in my life that seem to remain closed to me. I use the word "seem" intentionally...I think they may not be closed at all. Actually, I think there may not even be any doors there at all.
I am constantly telling others not to get too close to their own situations, to take a few steps back so they can see what they are doing and how they get in their own way. Time to heed my own words.
I realized something today - I admit that to everyone who knows me, this would sound so daft, as it would have been so obvoius to them and even to me in a sense - I have an intense need to control anything and anyone that has the potential to hurt me. Okay, this I have always known. Here is the thing I realized today...I am going to get hurt again, and again and again and I am not always going to see it coming and I am not always going to be able to prevent it and if I do not stop trying to do so, I am going to hurt myself far more than would the thing I am trying to prevent.
I am limiting myself and the things and people in my life when I try to control them. Worse, I am allowing myself to live in fear. Here is how I do it and I am a master at it. I let down my guard long enough to let something or someone new into my life, just long enough for it or him or her to matter to me, just close enough so that if I were to lose it, it would really hurt. That's when the fear starts and rather than acknowledging the feeling and just letting it be and pass, I turn all of my attention to it. I bring all of my intellect to bear on ways to prevent the thing I fear from coming to pass. In so doing, ironically, I set in motion the very things most likely to cause the thing I fear to happen. I do this not because I want the thing to happen, I do this because I am convinced it will happen no matter what I do, so I make it happen under my control. Doing this creates for me the illusion that I have spared myself some pain. But I am so, so wrong.
Back to perspective. As I was saying, I was advised to take a step back and get a little perspective on what it is I have been doing. Here is what I see from a few feet back...the reason my behavior is so harmful is because it prevents me from living in and enjoying what I have in the present. I have a lot to be happy about right this very minute. Living in and accepting that all I have is this present moment has been a hard lesson for me to learn. Enjoying something is the very thing that triggers my need to control its loss. Problem is, to engage in that behavior is to assume it will be lost, then, acting on a potentially faulty assumption, set in motion the course to actually lose it. So dumb.
I am writing this to remind myself that this journey we have all undertaken on these boards is to save ourselves (and for some their marriages - no longer the case for me). It is so easy to start believing we are done working on ourselves. We are never done...there is always more we can do.
M22,H45,W45 S21/18D12 Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties and at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
The only way anyone can handle self awareness: by daily practice of the lessons learned; by accepting that I am human and will not always get it right; and by continuing to monitor what works and what does not.
Hi V, It's always good to see you posting here - I think a lot of people benefit from your your thoughts and your words. Staying in the present, however obvious it might seem after a while, does prove to be much trickier to accomplish as one gets older. Sometimes our ideas of the future can lure us into looking far beyond today - and that's good, to some degree, since it brings with it a sense of hope - but I think it's also risky, since it can also bring with it a sense of expectation..and that gets messy real fast.
Sometimes - at least for me - thoughts seem to spiral around and around an issue that maintains a strong presence in my life...the thoughts just stay there, spinning and spinning, round and round like they're trying to find the end of an infinite spiral...Every now and then I get enough sense to step off the spiral and see it for what it is...a journey for its own sake that will arrive nowhere of consequence...that can be good for some experiences..useless for others...
You say that you are wandering...if so, you wander well because the message is clear and easy to follow. Thank you, once again, for your thoughtful and helpful words. You offer a perspective that I just was not seeing or could not see.
I have felt very caught up in a spiral lately; your words describe it perfectly. So, I am taking your advice, stepping back and seeing that the swirling thoughts in my head are, indeed, getting me nowhere of consequence.
You are also right about the risk of looking into the future too much...it is good because of the hope it brings but it can lead to expectations. As we have learned here, having and living according to expectations is usually a pretty bad idea.
Something I struggle to find is the ability to have hopes and desires for the future while not allowing those things to leave my grasp and become expectations, because that is where the trouble begins. Something to keep working on...
Hi..I too have been away for a bit. I'm sorry to hear that your situation has not worked out better for you, but I am glad to see you are clear and strong even though you are sad.
I still sit on the fence. I enjoyed reading your posts, they give me food for thought.
I was just reading about a doctor whose story I have followed for some years. She was working in the South Pole in Winter 1999 when she, as the only doctor in the station, diagnosed and treated her own breast cancer. (Because of the weather conditions, she could not leave the remote station for many months). Sadly, she has died. In reading about her death, I found this quote of hers and it touched me and reminded me of something that is so, so important for all of us here.
Here is what she said: "More and more as I am here and see what life really is, I understand that it is not when or how you die but how and if you truly were ever alive."
Normally, I am pretty verbose. Today, I think I will just let Dr. FitzGerald's words echo.
Hi V That's a great quote from Dr FitzGerald...!! So true...Live our lives to the fullest because we just don't know what will happen tomorrow... Leave nothing on the table, I don't want to have any regrets when I looked back down the road, easy to say and yet hard to do. Hope and expectation, I think it is all about balance. I believe we got to have some hope. Otherwise, what else is there to drive us through the tough times. The rewards are wonderful when the tough times pass.
Fear sucks... Fear limits on what we should have achieved. Fear almost means we were defected. The V that I know....she would grab FEAR by the neck, rip his head off, P on it and kick it to the curb...!! Use those boots to kick....
NW626
Me:33 STBXW:38 S:3 It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you fight the fight....!!
Hey...so glad to hear from you. Thanks for what you said...I like to think Veronica would, indeed, do those very things to fear. But, she also tries to use it to motivate herself to grow.
I once had a discussion with someone very important to me about the meaning of being fearless. Here is what we decided: to be fearless does not mean to never have fear. Rather it means to keep moving forward, doing what we need to do in spite of the fear.
Timing is a funny thing...this person just showed an incredible amount of fearlessness this very day and here you are reminding me of it and that conversation.
Hey VV and NW - how cool to see the whole gang here again... yep...fear...it does suck...I use it as my guide to tell me I've got something to work on...never seems to fail at telling me that...now if only I could be as successful at getting the work done...
That is an excellent quote to share here, Veronica. There are just so many ways to capture what it means to live with a carpe diem attitude...and NW nailed a big part of it...live life to the fullest because we never know what will happen tomorrow...
