Just thought I'd republish this from another blog. I had it listed under dealing with depression but I realise that it applies to so much more and how our fear of change reaches into so many more areas of our psyche......
Understand that you cannot stop being when you change and that change is our very nature - with every breath, heartbeat & thought, we are changing. Know that your future is not black as night, that finding out who you really are is not an unknown journey. You were always you, from the very beginning. Your job now is to uncover YOU and rediscover YOU and explore what the adult YOU loves to do.
So......your new tool is: "I'm an adult now - I can be whatever way I want to be and when I leave my old beliefs behind, I will finally have a chance to be me". The sun is rising before me, its a brand new day and I'm off on an adventure to rediscover ME."
Monday, September 26, 2011
Life and onions
Well.......
Much has come to pass since I last wrote.
I've decided....we're all ogres. Haha....like Shrek.
"Ogres are like onions.....Onions have layers. Ogres have layers."
Turns out our anger has layers too....bitterness is the adult form of anger. We cope with our base anger and hurt with base tools....patterns we learnt in childhood but bitterness is what happens when we grow up, look back and realise the extent of what happened to us. Bitterness creates a judgmental personality. Bitterness wraps us up and justifies every nasty thought, word and action towards those that hurt us anybody that crosses our path at the wrong time. Bitterness blinds us wayyy more effectively than normal anger.
I used to watch the old ladies coming out of the supermarket (when I had to wait for some reason). Looking at the lines on their faces.....the stories of their pasts ingrained on their personalities. How many of them looked soooo bitter with downturned mouths. I remember wondering what could make them that way and hoping it wouldn't happen to me. Now that I'm in my mid-forties, I know what made them that way........it was life.
Youth has a beautiful naievity that I miss terribly. In youth, you believe in everything, so easily. By the time your forties comes around, your heart hasn't just been broken a few times....its been smashed into ground, along with a dash or two of dreams. Most of us have lost babies, homes and loved ones by then. Some of us will have lost all that and a few of us have literally lost eveything - sometimes more than once. In mid-life you have come to understand that life really isn't fair, that those you always thought were there for you - really weren't and can't be. Mid-life is when you wake up to realise that the idea of controlling your world is nothing but an impossible fantasy.
That sounds terrible doesn't it and why would anybody continue to bother....because its not all that shitty - even though some days it feels like it. No life isn't fair but there is an abundance of beauty in amongst the tragedies. There's laughter, cute attacks, friends, best friends, children if your lucky (and they'll just blow you over with sheer incredible-ness), good food, good conversations, pleasure (not neccessarily sex but yes that too), games, good books, sunsets & sunrises, spring, winter, autumn, summer, flowers, buzzy bees, butterflies and many, many beautiful things.
Mid-Life loses its sense of wonder in the world, if bitterness has too much power. But mid-life has a weapon that youth doesn't. Time, focus and observation. We're at a time in our lives, when we've got enough to look back on, enough to summarise with and learn from. By mid-life, we've been watching other people for 20 years - people who are mirrors to ourselves. There's almost a measure of forsight and because of that - there are also epiphanies - moments when we suddenly click and understand something that was holding us back.
Yes.....observation will save you - observation of yourself and those around you. Know thyself - the great healing idiom ingraved upon the temple of Delphi. That and focus - choose to shift your focus from the tragedies to the beautiful moments in between - there are more of them.
Of course....I won't be able to tell you if I'm right for at least another decade....LOL
Much has come to pass since I last wrote.
I've decided....we're all ogres. Haha....like Shrek.
"Ogres are like onions.....Onions have layers. Ogres have layers."
Turns out our anger has layers too....bitterness is the adult form of anger. We cope with our base anger and hurt with base tools....patterns we learnt in childhood but bitterness is what happens when we grow up, look back and realise the extent of what happened to us. Bitterness creates a judgmental personality. Bitterness wraps us up and justifies every nasty thought, word and action towards those that hurt us anybody that crosses our path at the wrong time. Bitterness blinds us wayyy more effectively than normal anger.
I used to watch the old ladies coming out of the supermarket (when I had to wait for some reason). Looking at the lines on their faces.....the stories of their pasts ingrained on their personalities. How many of them looked soooo bitter with downturned mouths. I remember wondering what could make them that way and hoping it wouldn't happen to me. Now that I'm in my mid-forties, I know what made them that way........it was life.
Youth has a beautiful naievity that I miss terribly. In youth, you believe in everything, so easily. By the time your forties comes around, your heart hasn't just been broken a few times....its been smashed into ground, along with a dash or two of dreams. Most of us have lost babies, homes and loved ones by then. Some of us will have lost all that and a few of us have literally lost eveything - sometimes more than once. In mid-life you have come to understand that life really isn't fair, that those you always thought were there for you - really weren't and can't be. Mid-life is when you wake up to realise that the idea of controlling your world is nothing but an impossible fantasy.
That sounds terrible doesn't it and why would anybody continue to bother....because its not all that shitty - even though some days it feels like it. No life isn't fair but there is an abundance of beauty in amongst the tragedies. There's laughter, cute attacks, friends, best friends, children if your lucky (and they'll just blow you over with sheer incredible-ness), good food, good conversations, pleasure (not neccessarily sex but yes that too), games, good books, sunsets & sunrises, spring, winter, autumn, summer, flowers, buzzy bees, butterflies and many, many beautiful things.
Mid-Life loses its sense of wonder in the world, if bitterness has too much power. But mid-life has a weapon that youth doesn't. Time, focus and observation. We're at a time in our lives, when we've got enough to look back on, enough to summarise with and learn from. By mid-life, we've been watching other people for 20 years - people who are mirrors to ourselves. There's almost a measure of forsight and because of that - there are also epiphanies - moments when we suddenly click and understand something that was holding us back.
Yes.....observation will save you - observation of yourself and those around you. Know thyself - the great healing idiom ingraved upon the temple of Delphi. That and focus - choose to shift your focus from the tragedies to the beautiful moments in between - there are more of them.
Of course....I won't be able to tell you if I'm right for at least another decade....LOL
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