(no subject)

[wlotus]

I believe it is quite normal to question things and re-examine one's path at pivotal stages of life. The forty-something years are one of those stages. I am getting close to the age where I will not have as many years in front of me as I have behind me. Right now i can still double my age and see living to that number of years. That won't be the case, before I know it.

The other day I realized that the first 18 years of my life were a mistake on many levels. To make matters worse, I perpetuated many of those mistakes for another twelve years, not realizing there was another way to be. I have only been 11 years on the other side of the decision to seek other, healthier ways to be, so I don't feel as though I've entirely made up for the three "lost" decades at the beginning of my life. What a waste. As a result, I regularly find people far, far younger than me who have far more wisdom and freedom to be themselves in certain ways than I had at their age. Janelle Monáe is one of those people, which is why I admire her creativity as deeply as I do. I don't know much about who she is as an everyday person, but I like her creative vision, and I admire her gumption to put that vision out there in her own way for others to be inspired by. After I saw her perform last week, I wished I could be 24 years old and have that same belief in myself to put my own creative vision out there so young, when I had that kind of energy. She has been believing in and working on that vision for a few years, already. She started young.

I did not. I am 41 and just starting that creative journey. Well...that's not entirely fair to myself: I am not JUST starting. I've been inching along on this journey of self-realization all of my life, every time I kicked against the voices outside of me that said I had to suppress myself and live out their vision for my life, instead. It's just that compared to where I envisioned I would be at 41, it feels like I am just starting. Anyway, being where I am at 41 isn't a bad thing. It's far older than I would have preferred to be making the realizations I have recently been making about life, but that's just how my life worked out. I am not dead, so I can still make progress on my journey.

I try not to dwell on the what ifs. Instead, I am learning to acknowledge them (as I am doing in this post) and keep on moving. My paper journal gets them a lot. I figured I'd share these here, for a change.

Comments

[audrabaudra.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who's battled narcotics and alcohol addiction for as long as I've known him. There's a reason that one of the first actions in a 12-step program is accounting for how one's actions, even actions that were driven by addiction, have affected other people.

We can't change, whether "change" means conquering drugs and drink in his case or working on my manifold faults spiritually and mentally in my case, unless we acknowledge the ways we've affected others.

If we've made missteps, then others have felt the fall-out because we are defined by our relationships to other people. Those relationships make us real.

I think in modern US society, with its narrow focus on individuality, individual liberties, individual freedom, on and on, we forget the fact that in one definition of "personality" or "reality," we do not exist unless other human beings know us and acknowledge us. How many sad cases are there in NYC every year of elderly people or ill people passing away unnoticed in summer heat or winter cold because no one knew them? The point's driven home that we, literally, cease to exist when we are unknown by other people.

And as soon as other people know us, we start to affect them.

That, to me, is the REAL meaning of the phrase "Ye shall know them by their fruits." What effects am I having on people in my sphere now? What fruits will pass from me to them through their knowing me?

I can't BE unless I think about that.

Hefty responsibility? Yes. But. Learning how we affect others and how we can be better at affecting others for the good and the true is a main reason to be alive!

That's my thought on being someone who has had effects on other people that I wish I could change, but must learn to accept. On the side you mention, of being someone affected by other people's..."choices," let's say, my opinion is that no one's got the right to tell you to "get over it." That's dictatorial; it's affecting you badly all over again, and it even stops spiritual evolution in the speaker because s/he cannot examine his/her effect on you without admitting that you were affected, first of all, and that his/her effect on you was not positive. When s/he admits, "I had that negative effect on someone I love and care about," then spiritual growth can happen--through humility borne of self-awareness.

"Not positive" effects happen--we are all only human, after all. That's part of accepting that "what is, is." We have to accept that we've been negatively acted on and find it in ourselves to forgive so we can make progress in our spiritual development. But for other people to tell you to forgive and forget without doing the work in themselves to EARN that forgiveness--oh no. :-) If you've been the one negatively affected, then it's up to you when you forgive and how you forgive. Being told to just move on and do it...why, that's another stone thrown at you. Not appropriate and not acceptable.