Brace yourself guys, this is a kind of a mean one today.
But short. Well, short-ish.
Can we all appreciate that our feelings around being stuck in this life are almost entirely perpetuated by our own self?
That when stuff sucks, the feelings and beliefs and focus we have about that is exactly what keeps us in that place?
Maybe, maybe not. Some of you are about to tell me to piss off. Which is fair. And ironic. But that’s a bit later. And not necessarily your fault. This time, anyway.
Maybe its time for an example, rather than just more random triggering questions…
Vinnie cheated on you. With his best friend and your best friend. At the same time. On your mothers bed. For money. (Well, onlyFans at least. Not direct money, I guess, but getting paid for… documenting things that would get you arrested if you did it in the street, and letting people see the documentation FOR money. Anyway…). And then he bragged about it by buying a new mustang with the number plate “YRADUDRT” (ill understand if you cant get to the place where that reads “you’re a dud root”. I tried), and laughs hysterically when he unveils it to you. While the neighbours are watching. While they are also watching the “documentation” on their new onlyfans account.
Hmmmmm. What else?.... Oh yes, and you’ve just shit yourself too. In your favourite Sunday best.
Now, does that sound like a sufficiently sucky experience?
Does Vinnie deserve to be castrated with a rock before being curb stomped and then have the removed parts AND the rock shoved down the new gaping hole that was his mouth?
Do those best friends deserve to watch this castration while slowly being given an acid enema?
Well, probably.
I mean, I personally would ask what lead Vinnie to be that kind of person first beforehand. But, you know, either or.
Yep, shitty stuff happened. Leave the state shitty. So, what do we do now?
And this is where we finally get back to the point…
Do we A) Think about the atrocities committed against us for the remainder of our miserable lives, cursing the day we were ever born, let alone Vinnies?
Or B) Spend time and effort feeling the pain that such an experience would cause us, knowing that once we’ve felt that to its fullest extent and its done we can leave it behind and move on with a wiser and more Vinnie free existence?
I mean, its obviously as black and white as that…
But which one sounds better?
The correct answer is B, Melinda… You glutton for punishment, you.
But DO we move on? Do we make sense of it, learn what it had to teach us (like stay away from guys named Vinnie. Or, at least, guys who behave like Vinnie) and allow that to help us define and refine who we want to be now and how we want the future to look for us around that?
Or, do we feel the pain and betrayal? And ignore it, or supress it, or even embrace it as something to define our past and future experience of life now? Focus on it with an intensity that allows us to match the intensity of the pain we felt and spend the rest of our time and life justifying everything we do from that day on as attributable to that douchebag and his douche behaviour…
Look, as I alluded to before, it is NEVER as cut and dry as that. There is always grey area, and given we are all human, we ebb and flow within that.
But the point is, do we really want to give someone like Vinnie the power to make the rest of our lives about him?
Or that shitty thing your dad said once?
Or that HUUUUUGE bitch Samantha from school, who laughed in your face when you asked her out and then told what felt like nearly every person at school how much she found our shoes repulsive, let alone the rest of our look and just overall being and vibe.
The idea that our past trauma (even if that word can get a little overused these days, it’s a pretty good word to describe an experience that sucks and stays with you) is something that needs to become and remain the focal point of our very being is exactly what keeps us in that place. We make the past the only prominent component to us, and so we stay in the past. Stuck in the past. Because every thought and behaviour and action stems from this point in the past that we freeze frame and build ourselves around.
Now, I’m happy to offer a caveat here. This getting over the past traumas stuff is no cake walk. It’s never going to be, and to suggest otherwise is naïve in the extreme. But like everything else, we still get to make a choice around it.
Do we project our past trauma into the future?
Or do we take small but meaningful steps to adjust our thinking. Which in small ways can adjust out feeling. Which in equally small ways, can adjust our behaviours.
The point of memory, the point of the past, is to teach us lessons about ourselves and our interpretation of the world so that we can leave the past where it belongs. Behind us. Learn the lesson, take the value, be smarter and wiser and tougher and diligent for the experience.
But don’t spend all your time focusing on it. And we do, when we project the past as a certainty of the outcomes of life in the future and act based on then rather than now. That’s how things are sometimes.
There’s still a choice. And power over ourselves to make it. And a fight within ourselves to grow beyond that shitty stuff, embracing and using the power that comes from that shitty stuff.
Shitty stuff happens. No argument there.
I only make the point that if we assume that because it happened then, it’ll happen all the time, is a great way to make sure that’s all there is to life. Even if more shitty stuff doesn’t happen, we still feel like it is.
And lets be honest, how much difference is there really between something actually happening and feeling like its happened.
What do you focus on?
How do you want to feel?
What do you want the future to look and feel like?
Be kind, be smart, be your best you. No bar fights.
“Stop looking at today through yesterday's lens. Adjust your focus and capture life in living colour.” Sanjo Jendayi
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