Snap!
This year has gotten off to a terrible start for the world. It began with us losing some famous legends to cancer, a mammoth headache in the form of a Refugee Crisis, the mushrooming of ISIS recruits, and the terrifying realisation that Donald Trump may well be the next leader of the Land of the Free.
For me personally, life has gotten a bit better. On most days I still swing between moments of silent internal reflection making me wonder if I'm meant for sainthood, to a screaming cursing banshee that ought to be locked away for the sake of the well being of others. My children are often witness to the latter, a personality that allows her emotions to control her life. I expect immediate obedience of my children to any task I order them to undertake, when mentally, my own view of the world and its people is that they should all fuck off, sometimes for no good reason. As I get older, I'm beginning to understand how much of the lives we witness are merely an act. In this whole drama, it seems as though I was the only one wandering through life as a natural, resembling The Truman Show where realisation finally dawns on me. The magnitude of the deception in my life was at first devastating and heartbreaking, but it later became the very thing that set me free. I was given signs all along that something was amiss, but as is my nature, I blamed myself for "viewing life with jaundiced eyes" and convinced myself that what ever it was would either pass or that I would overcome it. What "It" was I still had no idea. I only knew that I fought hard to understand it and never received any understanding until it exploded in my face.
If any one asks whether I have any regrets I'm forced to say "No" because the one thing I truly regret, has also given me the greatest joy in my world - my children. Sometimes I wonder, could life have taken some other minor deviations that also gave me the same wonderful result, and I realise there's no point in pursuing that line of thought. The "Awakening" as I mentally refer to it has also woken me up to so many other spheres in my life that lay dormant, so many aspects of myself that I sacrificed and abandoned because I assumed that's what life was about.
Life is not about giving up any aspect of yourself in order to appease the people you love. Life doesn't have to succumb to any one role: that of wife / mother / daughter / sibling / employee / boss. We can make it about all of those things whilst coming to peace with the fact that in some phases of our lives we will have to choose one over the other. Life, for me, should be about creating, or at the very least recreating. I love being a mother, but I realised I wanted more and felt guilty that motherhood alone didn't fulfil me, so I accepted the unhappiness as punishment for daring to want more in life. Society told me I wouldn't want for anything once I became a mother, and I listened. I never rebelled. Without a doubt, I'd drop all other roles in my life for the role of being a mother if circumstances called for it. But, circumstances never called for it so far, by God's grace. Life never puts limitations on us. We do that. Society does that. If you're unhappy, only you can take the step towards your happiness. It seems a very simple idea but it's tragically misunderstood by most of us.
We have expectations of people, much of it unspoken because we assume the person we love can somehow read our mind. The fact is that the person we love is just another person. They come from a different upbringing, a different value system, and you both may well be like chalk and cheese when there is less adrenaline in your system. For whatever reason your paths crossed, you, as an individual, took a decision that this person would be your partner for life based on a loose understanding of their character and on a high of hormones that Nature bestowed on you for the sake of procreation. At a time when we barely know ourselves, it's a miracle that we can lay claim to "a better half that knows us and still loves us" - as if this were some bonus step in the act of loving. We live on a planet that's hurtling through space at quite a terrific speed. At any point in time we can be instantly eliminated by an asteroid or by alien invasion, or we may carry on this evolutionary process for a few more millennia. Our lives are but a sum of our experiences with each other - the good, the bad, the ugly and the manufactured. What we process from our experiences we put forward into the future via interactions with our own children.
I am a sum of my experiences with my society. That's not to say I can blame them for all my failings, but I can recognise the failures for what they are and CHOOSE to take a different path. There's no guarantee to the new path either. It's just a different path and only time will tell whether it was a good decision or a life lesson. Our bigger challenge in living this earthly life on a mentally higher plane lies in letting go, in forgiving, in asking to be forgiven, in understanding the power of our words and the tone in which we use it, the gestures that accompany it. It's as though we've progressed as a species and regressed as individuals. We can go to the moon, but we cannot stay faithful to a spouse. We can recognise "life" on another planet, but turn a blind eye to life in a womb. We're a real mystery as a species, as individuals, as religious groups, as genders, as a social class. So when you think you "know" someone, chances are you really don't. We're ALL capable of brutality, we're ALL capable of tenderness. We're taking a chance on ourselves, because to love someone is to give them the power to destroy you. And when you're done picking up the pieces of your remaining self you realise you had way more strength than you gave yourself credit for.
For me personally, life has gotten a bit better. On most days I still swing between moments of silent internal reflection making me wonder if I'm meant for sainthood, to a screaming cursing banshee that ought to be locked away for the sake of the well being of others. My children are often witness to the latter, a personality that allows her emotions to control her life. I expect immediate obedience of my children to any task I order them to undertake, when mentally, my own view of the world and its people is that they should all fuck off, sometimes for no good reason. As I get older, I'm beginning to understand how much of the lives we witness are merely an act. In this whole drama, it seems as though I was the only one wandering through life as a natural, resembling The Truman Show where realisation finally dawns on me. The magnitude of the deception in my life was at first devastating and heartbreaking, but it later became the very thing that set me free. I was given signs all along that something was amiss, but as is my nature, I blamed myself for "viewing life with jaundiced eyes" and convinced myself that what ever it was would either pass or that I would overcome it. What "It" was I still had no idea. I only knew that I fought hard to understand it and never received any understanding until it exploded in my face.
If any one asks whether I have any regrets I'm forced to say "No" because the one thing I truly regret, has also given me the greatest joy in my world - my children. Sometimes I wonder, could life have taken some other minor deviations that also gave me the same wonderful result, and I realise there's no point in pursuing that line of thought. The "Awakening" as I mentally refer to it has also woken me up to so many other spheres in my life that lay dormant, so many aspects of myself that I sacrificed and abandoned because I assumed that's what life was about.
Life is not about giving up any aspect of yourself in order to appease the people you love. Life doesn't have to succumb to any one role: that of wife / mother / daughter / sibling / employee / boss. We can make it about all of those things whilst coming to peace with the fact that in some phases of our lives we will have to choose one over the other. Life, for me, should be about creating, or at the very least recreating. I love being a mother, but I realised I wanted more and felt guilty that motherhood alone didn't fulfil me, so I accepted the unhappiness as punishment for daring to want more in life. Society told me I wouldn't want for anything once I became a mother, and I listened. I never rebelled. Without a doubt, I'd drop all other roles in my life for the role of being a mother if circumstances called for it. But, circumstances never called for it so far, by God's grace. Life never puts limitations on us. We do that. Society does that. If you're unhappy, only you can take the step towards your happiness. It seems a very simple idea but it's tragically misunderstood by most of us.
We have expectations of people, much of it unspoken because we assume the person we love can somehow read our mind. The fact is that the person we love is just another person. They come from a different upbringing, a different value system, and you both may well be like chalk and cheese when there is less adrenaline in your system. For whatever reason your paths crossed, you, as an individual, took a decision that this person would be your partner for life based on a loose understanding of their character and on a high of hormones that Nature bestowed on you for the sake of procreation. At a time when we barely know ourselves, it's a miracle that we can lay claim to "a better half that knows us and still loves us" - as if this were some bonus step in the act of loving. We live on a planet that's hurtling through space at quite a terrific speed. At any point in time we can be instantly eliminated by an asteroid or by alien invasion, or we may carry on this evolutionary process for a few more millennia. Our lives are but a sum of our experiences with each other - the good, the bad, the ugly and the manufactured. What we process from our experiences we put forward into the future via interactions with our own children.
I am a sum of my experiences with my society. That's not to say I can blame them for all my failings, but I can recognise the failures for what they are and CHOOSE to take a different path. There's no guarantee to the new path either. It's just a different path and only time will tell whether it was a good decision or a life lesson. Our bigger challenge in living this earthly life on a mentally higher plane lies in letting go, in forgiving, in asking to be forgiven, in understanding the power of our words and the tone in which we use it, the gestures that accompany it. It's as though we've progressed as a species and regressed as individuals. We can go to the moon, but we cannot stay faithful to a spouse. We can recognise "life" on another planet, but turn a blind eye to life in a womb. We're a real mystery as a species, as individuals, as religious groups, as genders, as a social class. So when you think you "know" someone, chances are you really don't. We're ALL capable of brutality, we're ALL capable of tenderness. We're taking a chance on ourselves, because to love someone is to give them the power to destroy you. And when you're done picking up the pieces of your remaining self you realise you had way more strength than you gave yourself credit for.
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