More Than This

It as been said that if you look at someone long enough, the truth comes out, you discover their humanity. That goes for looking at yourself as well.

I had been coasting, waiting for a shoe to drop, for the next tear to fall, for something to happen that required me to change.

I had felt the weight of the world on my shoulders, everything that was real and imagined, everything owned and unowned, until I hit the breaking point and mentally broke down.

Every day does not look upbeat and happy. I am still piecing together the broken shards of my life, wondering when (not if) it will shatter again, knowing the process is a cycle of up and down, good and bad, ruin and rejuvenation.

I always felt like I was showing up for others. I was the one who was supposed to have my act together all the time, never needing to disclose the painful parts of life.

Many people spend a lot of time ruminating, thinking about the past or the future. Do it consistently and making a habit of it creates a loop, preventing you from living in the moment. The more you ruminate, the more your imagination drifts to the negative outcomes. "
Catastrophizing," believing that something is far worse than it actually is, inevitably leads to missing out on what is happening around you. It is a trap that many fall into, consumed by what might have been or what could possibly go wrong.

I try not to ask too much of myself, or neglect my own needs. I try to focus more on the happy moments than on the painful or stressful ones.

Staying present can be a battle, making it incredibly difficult to enjoy the time you have with your loved ones, close friends and people you care about. Worrying about the future hinders our ability to live fully in the present, which is all we really have, this fleeting moment, the right now.

We all have high and low points in our lives. Anyone who appears to have it all figured out is presenting what they want you to see. There are always things that rain on their parade. Some of us are just better at hiding it, or completely suppressing it, not wanting to show the scars we hide, keeping things to ourselves until we no longer can manage to maintain the facade.

Whatever you are going through you are not alone. We are all putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward and backward, taking things day by day. One step at a time, one bite of the elephant at a time, one thing at a time.

Rollercoaster

Your boss is impressed with you, and you're happy. The next day they find what you did disappointing, and your heart sinks.

You meet someone, things click, and you want to spend time together. When you make yourself available, they aren't. It’s complicated. You understand and retreat and they are back, persistent, filled with regret. You make yourself available and then they are gone.

Welcome to the roller coaster of life.

One day you are up, the next day you are down. Surely the way to fix this is to do it right. If you get it perfect, this thing that feels special may stand a chance. But we can’t control the ups and downs of life, we can't make it go higher instead of lower, we can't stop the times where your world is upside down and nothing makes sense.

Ups and downs come at various times and different lengths throughout our lives. We really never know what to expect. The lows in life make me feel like there is no hope or end in sight. The highs make me feel like life is perfect and will always be that way.

What we can do is decide how we will feel about the ride. We can scream and hate it, or we can throw our hands up in the air with a big smile on our face and yell out joyfully at the thrill of the ride. Life is a blend of joy and sorrow in unknown proportions. We need to taste the bitterness of pain and sweetness of joys without hesitation; we don't know when the next time we will experience them.

When you are happy or in a positive place, you remember the bad times, reflect on when the situation was difficult, when you were crying and thinking life would never get better. When you extremely sad or in a negative place, you miss the time you were happy, when things were easier and when life looked like it was perfect.

You can't have one without the other. We need to enjoy the life we were given and embrace it every day. We need to have the same attitude and positivity towards life when we experience these down turns.

The essential realization of your boss being impressed or disappointed has nothing to do with you. The only way off the roller coaster is to not let their disapproval or approval affect you. The interest and lack of interest from the new person in your life has nothing to do with you. They are going through whatever and while it may be justified and understandable, the one on the roller coaster is you and you need to disengage.

Reaching perfection in the eyes of others is impossible yet we strive for each and every day. We want people to like us, to see us how we see ourselves, to understand things how we understand them.

And that's the issue. We can't expect others to see things exactly like we do, to share our feelings completely, to agree with what we say is right. We all love approval, but ultimately the measure of our work, our worth, our love, is ourselves.

Whatever It Takes

We all have people we turn to when we need advice, want to have important discussions, seek wise counsel. Some are family, some are friends, some we've never met but their lives, their writings, their sense of being inspire us. These people know what we should do or say or how to traverse relationships much more efficiently that many of us.

In addition to knowledge and good judgement, what really makes someone wise is a deep feeling for the fears, hopes, passions of others. While we can be blind to our biases, the wise know our own perception of the world is not always accurate or objective and will help us see that.

Being the wisest person in the room means to discipline ourselves to not to rush to judgment. We stop the world when we stop our thoughts, and experience peace and mental clarity.

What happens when that person becomes us, when we become the mantle of responsibility for the family? The reality of the situation moves from one set of shoulders to another, time passes, and we assume responsibility for the the families that we are a part of. Even knowing that will happen it is still a surprise when the realization occurs that it has happened.

It's always been there; I was raised that way, learning the expectations of a leader of the family. When my grandfather died, my grandmother became the matriarch of the family. When she passed, my father became the patriarch. When he died, the torch was passed once again.

I’ve had a number of opportunities to doubt my prowess as patriarch, as I've been figuratively broken for a long time. The bad part about being the patriarch is that people expect you to have the answers. There’s no mentor for me to ask my own questions. How am I supposed to provide guidance when I can't even guide myself?

I'll never ask for the torch, but sometimes the role chooses you. If the role is to be the family truth teller, I can do that. I'll tell my story, and that story becomes our story, and all its embellishments and omissions becomes the story of our lives. If I have any doubts, I will try not to show them. I will not rush to judge, do my best to experience peace and mental clarity, and tell these stories again and again. Because, in the end, we're all stories.

Breathe Me

We can't change the past, but we think about it, wishing we had done something differently.
It's not inherently negative to think over different scenarios and how they could have played out. How we choose to frame it in our minds, and what we do about it, is vital to our well being.

The bitter tears of self-reproach tend to involve distorted thinking. It's easy to label yourself as a "loser" when you fail to achieve at work, a relationship falls apart and ends, finding yourself emotionally broken because things went awry.

Detachment, anxiety and depression can be the outcome of failing to reconcile thoughts that result in feelings of shame, guilt or regret. Those emotional bruises are self-inflicted and are among the hardest to recover from. No one knows you better than yourself, so you deserve to feel that way.

It is the judgment of our self or how we think others perceive us that causes us to feel flawed and unworthy. Perfectionism is known to be a manifestation of fear of failing, disapproval or letting others down. You get into the cycle of needing things to be perfect, to repeating things over in the same way because they worked before, paralyzed from considering alternatives or taking any risk because it may not be good enough.

We often cannot recognize when our responsibility ends, where our personal ownership lies, where we can't take on everything that goes awry. It is not always clear how much of what went wrong is ours to own. Once we understand what is our responsibility, we need to own it, acknowledge our part in what is wrong, what we created through action or inaction.

We are not perfect and are not going to get it right every time. We need to recognize these truths and hold on to them. Entering into situations and relationships with that frame of mind creates an opportunity for us to evolve through introspection. Trying to be right every time means those opportunities for personal evolution never happen because we spend all our time and energy on trying to maintain the facade of perfectionism.

Self-acceptance. Sounds simple, doesn't it? All we have to do it recognize we are perfect the way we are, that we need to love ourselves for who we are, and that perfection is simply and unequivocally imperfect, a beautiful disaster, our humanity on display for all to see.

As John Steinbeck wrote in East of Eden, "And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good." We may not strive for mediocrity, but accepting that being okay, being good, being our imperfect selves, means we're okay.

Arriving at a point of self-realization where we grant ourselves the freedom to accept ourselves means our glorious imperfections are opportunities, not obstacles. We need to open our eyes, our hearts, our minds, and embrace it.