You may or may not be familiar with choose your own adventure books. I remember taking them out of our school library in elementary school. In the books they would set up a scene, get you acquainted with the character, who was the narrator (I think). Then there was a problem a few pages in. There would be a list of options and then a page number would follow. Thus you would decide the fate of the main character.
It is about time that I saw myself as the main character of my life. I need to know that not only do the big decisions count, but each small step has the power to change the course of my life. In this case I am referring to my interactions with those around me. We are challenged each and every day to come up with ways to hold the difficult people in our lives, dear. So, how is this going to change? How am I going to get better at reacting to others?
Maybe the answer is a non reaction. People try to bring us into their drama, their problems, their negative energy. What if we pulled ourselves away and just had the guts to say to people, "This 'stuff' that your talking about, is not mine, I don't want to carry that weight along with my own". Why don't we say this? Because we have been told that good friends, good co-workers are supposed to "take it". How can we walk away gracefully, without guilt, and without personal satisfaction? When you help a friend, a part of you knows you did a good thing and we internalize that satisfaction. We are not glad our friend suffers, but we look for opportunities to feel good about helping. So, How can we just know we are good and move on. Just believe and not need others to validate it?
1 comment:
I like this metaphor in looking at emotions... so often, it seems, the syntax of the language we use suggests that our emotional reactions are not OUR fault (as in "it made me SO mad..."). Granted, being THAT aware of language would be exhausting, but it's interesting to think that we even use our own language to suggest that we don't own that reaction...
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