The Unpleasantness

[qt4x11]

This is a visualization/meditation technique to do when things seem very dark and you can’t go on.

Think back to 3 times in your life when all things seemed very bleak and all seemed lost.

1. In 2009 my father died, I remember not wanting to talk to anyone for days, and one night when I was driving down the highway at top speed in the dead of night. This was a very dark time for me.
2. In 2006 my ex girlfriend of 5 years broke up with me. I remember it hit me like a punch to the gut, I remember one day I went to my car during lunch at work and I cried. I thought that I would never love again.
3. In 2000 I decided to leave my friends in NYC and start over from scratch in Chicago. I felt lost, directionless, I felt like a failure.

Each of these times felt like the lowest point in my life, in my mind I could not get any lower and would never be happy again. But - if you asked me today, in 2016, if I’d like to go back to

1. The summer day my father died in a dimly lit hospital room surrounded by doctors, or
2. The cold winter morning my ex girlfriend broke up with me on the phone as I drove to work, or
3. The day I sat in my darkened apartment and decided that there was nothing left for me in NYC, and that I should just go back to Chicago because I didn’t have any money left

If you asked me to go back to these times in my life I would gladly go back! Why would I want to go back to such dark times in my life and relive them? Because I also know that I recovered from these times, and went on to have very happy times, so much joy that they made these bad times seem almost irrelevant. Meeting my wife for the first time, the birth of my children, happy times that gave shape and meaning to the periods of darkness I’ve gone through in my life.

You never know what life has in store for you, even at your lowest point, there could be great joy around the nearest corner. In 10 years, will I look back at this horrible miserable, day in June 2016 when my wife was trying to divorce me - and laugh? Will I laugh at how miserable I was? because I forgot that I would be happy again if I just accept the past and let life change again.