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Fights: What Do You Battle The Most?
In one word, what topic do you fight about with friends or family the most regarding health?
OR for carers: What topic stresses you out the most with those that you love?)
For me it has to be GUILT. I feel guilty when I need to take a break… when I can’t keep up with everyone… when I advocate for myself… when I don’t advocate for myself… and on and on. I find a way to feel guilty for nearly everything- though I “know better”- and sometimes (without meaning to) family and friends express resentment in their own ways too. Simply telling someone to not feel guilty is never enough, of course, we have to actively work against it all the time (whether or not we invited the shame).
I feel it the most when traveling on another’s timeline. Family events, road trips, and social outings can be tough, because I have to stop to go to the bathroom extra or can’t walk as fast or as far, and so on. (This is not always a problem, of course, but when it is, I have a hard time reminding myself it’s temporary and/or out of my control.)
What about you?
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2 Replies
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In one word: Stories.
By the way, I am not telling you not to feel guilty at all. By all means, feel guilty! But realize, that you can only feel guilty if you believe that “you” have “done” something. Now try feeling guilty without a feeling of “you” “doing” (including “not-doing”). It’s impossible.
Mostly, I only feel that in this apparent life “things happen” without any personal label to it. To personalize life is ignorant and arrogant. Life is not for anyone in particular to claim. It is much too complex and miraculous for that. You can cause nothing on your own, you never have and never will. You are always the result of things happening. Enjoy the free fall.
Guilt is always the result of losing perspective by zooming in too much. It is like looking at a disaster: when you investigate any disaster, it turns out there is never one single cause, always a multitude of things coming together in time and space. Of course one could make the mistake of singling out the last second of the story and the last person to have played its role (in “my” story it is always “me”), but there is not much reality in that. Much more real is to zoom out and see that everything just happens as a result of a myriad of causes, the so-called cosmic causality that goes back to Adam and Eve and beyond. It had to happen anyway, it could not have happened otherwise (apparently, otherwise it would have). And it happened perfectly and completely. So every thing/every one is to blame and no thing/no one).
So I consider “myself” to be the epitome of cosmic causality and a walking disaster happening all the time at the forefront of this. As well as a walking miracle of course, it’s the same thing. I slightly prefer the last view, although there is no actual difference: there is a lot of freedom in both views.
What I battled the most are stories in my mind that wanted to tell me otherwise. Until I discovered the freedom not to believe them (because they are not true anyway) and started to exercise this freedom. When the public had left, they faded away like actors in a closed-down theatre.
Namaste,
Palu (it just happened as this: another free miracle/disaster)
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I think we all have that tendency to tell ourselves stories. I tell myself stories about what it means to be a woman, a parent, a partner, etc. Challenging those stories is something I’m able to successfully do at times, but other times, I start believing them. Thanks for this reminder, Paul!
And Bailey, something I find myself doing is pushing past my own boundaries in order to keeping up with others. Especially when it comes to friends and social gatherings, I’m guilty of pushing myself too hard, too far, and all too often. At times, I find it incredibly difficult to admit that I should be taking it easy. This behavior inevitably catches up with me. I’ve gotten better at it through the years, but I still struggle at times!
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