As a parting thought, Scott always gives me something to think about until we meet again. This session was no different. He left me with an idea recently shared with him that he was still mulling over in his head. At first glance, his immediate reaction to this idea was how wrong it was. Then after a few days of examining it from all sides, he was left scratching his head...still not sure about its validity but unwilling to dismiss it. Oddly enough, I had been introduced to this idea years ago, probably from one spiritual guru or another, and had immediately taken it at face value and agreed with it whole-heartedly. Now I'm not so sure.....
The idea he left me with was that at any given moment, we all do the best we can. Let that sink for a moment. I think most people's immediate reaction is negative because all you have to do is listen to the news to find hundred of examples that contradict that idea. Politicians. Corporations. The Insurance Industry. Our Government. Their Governments. The Education System. Sex scandals in churches and schools. Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing. Racial Profiles. Hate Crimes. We can go on and on before even glancing at our own personal lives. We all have regrets, things we wish we'd done differently, things we are ashamed of. I don't know anyone who is immune from that.
The reason I've always felt comfortable agreeing with this statement is because I have a tendency to look beyond the isolated incident to include a little history of all the players. We all walk through life with our own filters...filters we've developed over time that were influenced by people, situations and consequences of our past... and these filters influence how we react in almost every situation. It's almost like we're each a big ball of yarn made up of dozens of different colored pieces of thread. If you could grab one piece and unravel it to its source, we'd find out when, where and why that particular piece was added to our ball. Maybe a red one came from a teacher in the third grade who encouraged you and set you on a path to be successful or the dark blue one was added when a bully said something that knocked the wind out of you and you never really got it back. Maybe you have a green one that came from a crappy relationship with your parents or a fantastic one. The yellow one might have started winding around your ball while you watched your mom become a doormat for men and you vowed to never fall in that trap or subconsciously allowed yourself to follow in her footsteps. The point is every thread has a beginning, something that left a significant mark on our souls. Some good, some bad, some important, some whimsical...but all included in your brightly colored ball of yarn.
It seems obvious that every thread in our ball will influence every moment of our lives. When we are deciding whether or not to push forward or fall back, the threads that represent our successes will be called upon. If we are backsliding down the same ol' wrong paths, it's the painful threads probably from our painful childhood or an incredibly hurtful breakup that influence us the most. Because whether these threads are painful or positive, they are so, so familiar. Like a child taken away from an abusive parent, all they really want is to go back because its familiar and they know what to expect and how to handle it. There aren't many threads representing our marches into the scary unknown because most of the time we avoid it although I suppose there are times when we realize that the unknown might be horrible but it can't possibly be as bad as what we're living in right now so we surge forward with our sabers drawn. Sadly those threads are few and far between.
I think that's why it's always been so easy for me to agree that we're all doing the best we can...but now I'm not sure I still agree with that statement anymore. Obviously if you come to a tough decision with a hundred threads representing hurt, pain, distrust, disrespect and no love and only ten threads that came from positive sources, it's a pretty safe bet that you're going to handle your tough decision badly. You're probably going to go down the exact same path you've walked before and even though you're hell-bent on getting better results, we all know that won't happen. Unfortunately when life throws us tough choices, we don't usually react logically. If we did then we'd never make the wrong choices. But it's not about logic, it's about learned behavior and habit. It's about how we've always chosen to see ourselves and our lives. Like a caste' system, we've learned/decided/agreed that our position in this world is here, at this particular point on the scale. Some people see themselves high on the scale with a lot of value, others are lower with less worth. It all comes from what we learned and what we decided to believe about ourselves. Every decision we make in life, even those tiny insignificant ones are adding threads to our balls of yarn. So if we continue to make the same choices, we'll continue to get the same colored threads added to our ball.
Obviously we can't change our past. We can't remove certain threads that represent darkness and pain. They are permanent pieces of our lives. All we can do is to continue adding threads of happiness, good decisions, choices that were tough to make but the right thing to do, etc. Eventually the good will outweigh the bad and as the ball gets bigger and bigger, the bad threads will disappear under good ones wrapping around and around. There might actually be so many "good" threads on the outside of our balls of yarn that its impossible to see the "bad" threads anymore. The only problem is its really hard to do this when we're stressed out. You're not necessarily thinking clearly when your faced with a tough decision and its almost impossible to analyze and evaluate the pros and cons of each decision in the heat of the moment. Our gut reactions can by pounding us over the head but the comfort of those bad threads seem to win more often than not.
So that brings me back to the question. Are we doing the best we can? No, I don't so and I don't think ever will as long as we wait for life's big decisions and then try to change our stars. It's just too difficult. When you're backed into a corner, you're going to fight your way out the only way you know how. It's definitely not the time to try to learn some new moves. So how do we ever get better? I think the answer lies in the quiet moments between the big tough decisions. It's laying down positive threads with those little decisions that will eventually make you strong enough to notice the bad threads aren't the majority anymore. Don't wait until you have to decide whether to make up and break. In the calmer moments, choose to no longer let him call you hateful names or constantly accuse you of something you haven't done. Choose to fight for yourself and gain your strength every day. Choose to not repeat the little mistakes so you can began to appreciate just how strong you really are. Maybe in the moments between the blowups you'll decide to let go of your obsession with perfection and decide instead to relax and not freak out if there's dishes left in the sink or unfolded clothes on the couch. Whatever it is, there's a thousand different little things that all add up to one big thing and changing all those little things, changes who we are. Changing who we are, changes our filters and changing filters, changes our lives.
So are we all doing the best we can? No, but it is possible to do what we can. And what we can do, is change the little things and then the big things will take care of themselves. And then we'll all be doing the best we can because our filters will be gone and we'll see clearly...maybe for the first time in our lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment