Changing Man

[Gardener]

Journaling,
Short journaling since after two days off, it's taken over 3 hours to catch up with you all. A lot of reading about progress, backslides, perserverance and - always - good humor. You guys are the best.

The Four Agreements has had such a wonderfully, simply liberating effect on my thoughts and emotions (talk about Cognitive Dissonance and the whole Thought leads to Emotion debate over at C-Bart's). I have re-read Be Impeccable With Your Word (the first agreement) a few times because "word" here means much more than one's word or commitment or the audible sounds that we speak. It's deeper and more universal than that. So I revisit it.

I can't begin to describe the profound and liberating effect that the Second Agreement (Don't Take Anything Personally) and the Third (Don't Make Assumptions) have had on my thought processes and resulting wayward, misplaced emotions. Talk about wasting time and energy! I honestly don't even take the bomb or the D personally anymore. I highly recommend this book and thank Gypsy (for the umpteenth time!) for turning me on to it.

I visited Dia's thread and rambled for a while since she had mentioned her and her H's resentments. I thought of my resentments this week, thought about the (fortunately) few resentments I had begun nursing and harboring against my wife pre-bomb.

And it struck me: the issues were few, real and they hurt. However, my resentment toward her was really misdirecting and avoiding resenting myself. I was in reality resenting me for not speaking out on the issues, not addressing them, avoiding the conflict that doing so would have caused and for not leading in this aspect of my R & M with my wife.

Could it be that whenever we resent anyone, we are really resenting ourselves, our own failure to address that which produced the resentment: our own inaction?

Also, while I was in Chicago and spent 3 1/2 hours "with" my wife and with my family, I couldn't find the rope. Thought I left it home. Got home that evening and it wasn't there either. Nowhere to be found.

I must've dropped it somewhere

Goodnight.