This poured out of me onto my facebook page this morning….
I had an ah-ha last night. The dots connected some more and bits and pieces of what I’ve heard over the years I finally got. So maybe it was more like a “duh”.
Authenticity, our truths, our stories – it is how we see ourselves AND the world around us. Even the most open-minded person shows up with a preconceived notion of how things should be.
Some most will agree with – for example stealing is bad. You would be hard pressed to find someone argue differently when put so bluntly. But does everyone act with integrity on that statement? Not for a second.
Because our lives are not simple, black and white. They are complex with many “if this than that” layers.
When a shake up occurs it’s because our story was rocked. Our truths were shown false and personally this has been a tough one for me.
I’m still stuck in the failure of my first marriage. I believed that you got married, you had kids, you bought a house, you raised a family, you retired, etc. No where in that story did you swap kids back and forth between houses. A mom knows her kids intimately, she didn’t have to wonder what they were thinking or learning, she was involved. Well wait a minute, if I’m not with Dylan when he’s at his dad’s house, I don’t know those things, therefore I’m not a good mom. Well fuck. I am a good mom, wait I’m not. And so the spiral of stress goes when truths are found to be gray instead of black and white.
Take the top stressors from all of those lists…
Divorce, death, jobs, kids, illness, infidelity, marriage.
These are all things that we have some pretty tight stories, rules, and truths about. So what do we do when our system fails? What do we do when a child dies before you? When your health fails? When your partner steps out?
Personally I tried denial. Then I beat myself up. After that didn’t work came slow acceptance that I was wrong, although with a sticky dark side. The depression lasted a while.
See this is where we get to the nuts and bolts of it all. This is where emotional maturity and life skills come into play. This is where we need those tools.
As the world has become more connected it has hindered and helped this process. We are no longer in our cocoon of people who think like us. We are more exposed to deviations of the norm – so much so that deviation IS the norm.
How do we cope with that?
I can tell you fighting it doesn’t work. Life will happen, people will die, health will fail, vows will be broken.
Staying small doesn’t help. If you’re not growing you are dying.
Rewiring our brains to our newly discovered truths is not easy by any stretch. Interrupting the synapses that occur subconsciously is a seemingly impossible task. For we cannot change what we don’t see.
So how then? How do we live authentically, with love and joy, amidst chaos?
We zoom out.
Take in a bigger picture. Allow for more input.
Does it change our wiring? Can you overcome cheating, illness, divorce? Yes. We’ve seen others do it. Change is possible, in fact it’s inevitable.
Some harden, some adjust, some accept, some wither away.
This is where our actions and choices come in. This is where we influence the outcome.
What will you choose today?
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