It's the time of year we make resolutions for. How will we spend the next 365 days? Will we stop doing something? Will we start doing something? This year, I am going to just start accepting who I already am and not bother with trying to be different. Judging myself as unworthy or unfit is a waste of energy, and I don't want to start off by telling myself I need to do something new to change who I am.
I had an interesting conversation yesterday about this tendency we have as humans to listen to our mind chatter as if it is true all the time. We constantly seek for something new to do or be that will "fix" whatever we think is broken about us. Usually it starts because we feel bad about something, or just in general. Immediately our minds chime in with all sorts of solutions to the problem. Feeling sad? Quit your job! Feeling angry? Start a new relationship, this person never really got you anyway. Feeling depressed? It's the world being full of jerks, and it must be time to start a campaign to feed starving children in Africa - that will set it all right! We are coming to realize that our minds are full of ideas and problems and solutions, because that's what they do. But their ideas don't have to be taken so seriously, and often have nothing to do with what is really going on.
Sometimes, we are just sad. We don't need five stories about why we are sad, who made us that way, how to take revenge and find a whole new way of being that is never sad at all. We just need to feel sad, and then it will pass. But it will never pass when we start to take action on our stories about sadness. It just perpetuates. We get caught in a loop of drama and create more of it as we try to escape the feeling. We pretend we are above it all now, but actually we are just standing in the center of a whirlwind of feelings and drama, keeping it all in motion and at arms length. Eventually it all catches up to us and then we are even more sad. Someday we have to stop or we end up creating even bigger stories to mask the failure of our original stories. The worst part, I think, is that everyone around us is so familiar with this routine that they support us in our craziness and tell us they agree with our stories, too. Personally, I'd like the madness to stop.
Nobody is out to get me. People aren't going to laugh at me if I make mistakes. Money isn't hard to come by. I don't have to earn every smile, dollar, laugh and smidgen of happiness that comes my way. I am tired of life lessons, tired of earning, tired of struggling so hard to barely go anywhere. I think I have really been valuing my struggles up until now. They have made me feel powerful, like I was overcoming such adversity it must mean I am powerful and strong, even though I felt weary and exhausted and frustrated and sad. You know what? Fuck struggle. I don't want anymore. If there is a resolution to be made this year, it is to let go of valuing struggle and start valuing joy and ease.
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