The following quote with my writings came up on my Facebook memories a few days ago. It’s over 5 years old, yet I’ve been musing about it for days and today it hit me hard. Although my situation and my struggles are completely different now, the advice (my own advice) are timeless! How cool is timeless (& situational-less) advice?
Today I overheard a patient tell another patient “Everyone knows their own journey”.
It stopped me in my tracks, I went Into my office- closed the door, and felt that familiar lump in my throat.
It doesn’t matter how many books you’ve read, how many classes you’ve taken, hours of meditation, praying, or positive thoughts you’ve tried to manifest, nothing prepares you for that moment when time stands still. When you get that phone call, read a text, discover a secret in a child’s journal, see a partners email or lose a huge project you’ve been working on, or realize that what you have yearned for – for weeks/months/years even, maybe isn’t going to happen right here, right now.
Your heart drops to your stomach, it feels like the blood is draining from your body.
As someone who feels things deeply (& chooses my energy & attention carefully) I can’t quite internalize the concept of having "No Expectations".
I just have to remind myself (& am so grateful for the wiseness of our elderly) in these moments which help with that.
Everyone’s journey is, indeed
their own. And really has little to do with ours! No one can tell them what’s best for them….
When it collides beautifully with my journey or painfully departs from what I want… all I can do is LOVE thru it💗myself & them also, trusting that the universe knows what’s best.
Time is irrelevant. (As hard as that is to navigate in real time)
Intention & destination are what matters. Memories are wonderful, but if you didn't enjoy them by living in the moment, by placing a certain time expectation on the relationship, you were probably eventually disappointed. The process of reciting earthly time or the numbers of phone calls or even counting sunsets, marking points in time as proof of the relevance of the relationship is not really helpful if ultimately, the thing, doesn't fulfill their (& yours) highest destiny.
And if their intention is not YOUR intention.
We just don’t have the understanding to know how the shaping of our hearts & souls is all working together for our best purpose.
Just like you can’t protect a child from pain…..you can’t keep yourself from disappointment.
Today hearing my wise patient say the words I needed to calm my restless heart & dry my flowing tears….helped me to remember
TRUST THE JOURNEY.
💥
TRUST MY JOURNEY.
Wow. I mean- you could argue that I’m just re-telling my same old self-destructive stories: that no one cares, no one understands, no one can handle me. Or that I’m justifying bad behavior. Or you could say that I was drawing on some ancient sage advice. Whichever it is, I welcome the perspective. These days I live day to day. Moment to moment. I don’t count on anything, yet I hope for everything. Some days I want my life to be finished. Others, I get a twinge of excitement at the future. I have a bit of PTSD about the future. I think I may have invented that.
Future PTSD. Afraid of what the future will throw at me.
Psychoanalyze that.
It’s pretty simple actually. Everything goes back to living in the moment, for the moment. Type A people with their Franklin Planners are cringing about now.
But rumor has it- that if your past experience prove you are unsafe in your feelings, then you tend to be scared of the future.
Gabor Mate might call that unhealed trauma. I call it – my reality. So having expectations, in my world, tends to be opposite. Expecting the worst. Paranoia.
Apparently I need to work on that pronoia stuff.
As for others’ journey, they need to work on their stuff too. We can’t do it for them and really can we fault them? If they are operating in their MO at all times, filling their needs as they perceive them at the time, is that bad?
“It’s selfish”, you might argue. “Everyone should be courteous to everyone else”.
At all times? So everyone should live and breathe and do what someone else thinks they should do- at all times?
“Well no, only when the situation arises”. What situation is that? ” the one where I think they should do things differently”. Oh ok. Are you going to tell them when those arise? “No, they should just know”.
Ok.
And so enters the never-ending human behavior argument that existed wayyyy before any pandemic. It’s what almost every marital argument or divorce court hearing is based on. Is someone else responsible for my needs and my own happiness? Where do their rights to happiness end and mine begin? On paper, in many counselors offices, it’s called a compromise. We each give up a little In order to achieve a goal. The problem arises in what that “little” constitutes.
Ahh but that may be grounds for another blog. For now, it might be safe to say, everyone is always doing the best they can with what information they perceive. Most of the time we have no way of knowing what their information or experience is. Not do we really need to know. (in my opinion.)
So much more to this. To go deeper here’s a pretty long video on self actualization (knowing needs and wants and how to improve by our interactions).
