Dogs have a way of reminding us to embrace the moment. Thank you, Tiger, for the lesson:)
Heal. Healing. Healed?
I’m not sure “healed” should be a word.
Heal? Yes. Healing? Absolutely. But, healed? Past tense. As in done. Finished. Over. Completed. Shut the door and turn the key.
I’m not so sure.
Some days I think I’m there, the wound healed over with no hint of a scar. But that’s just wishful thinking. A fallacy reveled when the wound opens from the slightest unintentionally targeted remark or interaction, triggering the pain and uncertainty associated with the initial cut. At least now I have practice. Practice feeling the pain and the fear. Recognizing its roots. Knowing what part of it is real and what is simply echoes of the past, ghosts that can cause no real harm. I have practice accepting the pain and practice letting it go. I speak its language.
It is said that practice makes perfect. Will perfect be when I am healed? Or will I achieve perfection in the cycle of feeling, accepting, and releasing? Most likely, perfection will remain elusive and I will have to settle for better:)
Maybe I will be healed when I accept that I will always be healing.
ROI
The world of business is always concerned about the return on investment, the bottom line. But, how often do we apply those same principles to our personal lives?
Your Thoughts
Do you place your capital in thoughts that serve you or into thoughts that bring down your bottom line?
Your Actions
Do you choose to engage in actions that help you to grow and evolve or actions that hold you in place?
Your Health
Do the foods you eat and the movement you engage in support your body or do they cause it harm?
Your Relationships
Do you spend time with people who add to your net worth or are they red item deductions?
Take some time to be conscious about your personal investment portfolio and make the needed changes to improve the ROI on your own life.
States of Matter
Which state of matter best describes you?
Solids are comprised of tightly packed molecules. They are rigid, holding their own shape. The atoms that make up a solid are stuck, their movement compromised by the proximity of their neighbors. If you are a solid, you are fixed in your life. Your environment does not impact your shape, as you resist influence from your surroundings. If too much resistance is applied, a solid crumbles and fragments, but it takes quite a bit for this to occur. Solids are consistent, yet their stalwart nature can make them vulnerable to fragmentation or erosion.
The particles that form liquids are freer to move, yet they posses cohesive properties that encourage them to remain in proximity to each other. The defining characteristic of a liquid is that it takes the shape of its container. If you are a liquid, you allow the environment to shape you, yet you maintain a a sense of self held in the solidarity of your component parts. You naturally flow, yet can move against the pull of gravity when effort is applied. You are resistant to pressure, yet accepting of influence.
Gasses are the free spirits of the chemical world; their particles enjoy total freedom at the expense of identity. The atoms and molecules in a gas will expand to fill its container as they bounce around with no thought to each other. If you are gas, you push against the constraints of your environment, constantly looking for a way out. The application of pressure simply intensifies this effect. You are free, open to anything, yet may not have a developed sense of self, as your component parts do not blend.
States of matter can be changed. Apply enough heat to a solid and it softens, liquifies. Apply too much perhaps, and you lose your substance as it evaporates. On the other hand, compress freely moving molecules hard enough, and you transition them to a liquid and eventually a solid.
In my own life, I strive to be a liquid. I want to be unified and have a definable self, yet I want to be open to influence. I desire to be able to relax and go with the flow, yet also be able to move against the current at will. The pressures I have faced have forced internal cohesion and the warmth from those around me has kept me soft and pliable. I try to monitor the dials and switches on my internal chemistry set to maintain this optimal balance despite the impact of the environment.
Anger Deflation
My biggest stumbling block was (and at times, continues to be) anger. I could not get past the deliberate nature of what he had done. Holding me, telling me how much he loved me and would miss me while his bride’s ring sat in his car, ready to be placed on her finger within the week. The years of lies and manipulations that covered the hemorrhaging accounts. And, worst of all, he went on the attack with the divorce, blaming me for everything. How could I not be angry? Livid?
I spent much of the last two and half years wrestling with the “how.” How could he do this? How could he seek to destroy the one he claimed to love (and seemed to show love to up until the last text)? How could he kiss me, be intimate with me, knowing that he was orchestrating this symphony of destruction? Try as I might, I just couldn’t make those actions, those lies, match the man I knew.
So, I thought of him as a boy.
I thought about what would cause a child to lie. Children generally lie out of fear. They want to please, and when they now they have disappointed, they seek to hide their actions by spinning tales. Looking over the last few years of my marriage, I saw a path (relating to a failed business attempt) that could have led him down the path of telling lies to hide his shortcomings, to protect me from the truth. As with a child, if these lies are not caught, they eventually become habit.
I thought about what would cause a child to lash out against loved ones. Children often lash out when they feel trapped and threatened. When he lashed out, he had been caught. The carefully crafted facade that he wanted the world to see had been stripped away, his deceptions, his failures bared for the world to see. He saw me as threatening his core, his very self, so he lashed out in a desperate attempt to shield.
I may be wrong in these motivations. Perhaps he is simply a sociopath, immune to other’s pain. Maybe he is evil, enjoying the suffering of others. But that doesn’t fit the man I knew, and so it does not bring me peace. However, by looking at his actions as I would a child’s, I have found that I see him as scared, unsure, and lost. That helps to deflate some of the anger, releasing the pressure and allowing me to move forward.
Lessons From the End of a Marriage 