A little over a week ago, within a 24 hour period, three people advised me to just live. I do tend at times to analyze life more than get out and do. Many years ago, I terminated therapy with the words that I wanted to quit analyzing life for a while and just live it. Hearing the same advice three times in one day was incentive for me to make some changes, not that I have given up analyzing life, as this blog will testify, but I am experiencing a greater degree of living than I have for some time.
About the same time as people were telling me to live, Eyes_Wide_Shut posted a blog that concluded Life is like the river, I think; beautiful, bountiful--dangerous. And magic. It reminded me of my life song, revealed to me in the Gila Wilderness nearly two decades ago: the song of the deep river flowing...
Martin666 added a comment to the blog which in part said:
Sit at the side of a rapids and listen to the sounds of the water. At first, the river will seem only a chaotic rush of noise. Now explore that rush more carefully. Choose one sound within the whole and follow it. There will be a pattern. There will be qualities of loudness and softness, and a rhythm in time punctuated by silent intervals, forming repetitions. Now choose a second sound—a small swirl directly at your feet, or the swish of water past a trailing branch. Explore it’s pattern of sound fully. Now, blend the two repetitions together and choose and blend a third sound, a fourth, a fifth. There's more, and I really recommend looking up the blog and reading it and Martin's comment in totality. It is truly beautiful -- as life can be
So what meaning do I make of life and the song of the river? I think that life, like the song of the river, merits attention, particularly when we are in the rapids. There are times when life does not flow so smoothly. We do not always experience peace, laughter, joy... Sometimes we may feel that we never have experienced those things and that we never will. Listening to our self-talk at those times can be useful. Are we cursing the rocks over which we have chosen to cut our path? Or are we taking responsibility for our direction, going with the flow, secure in the knowlege that our life force will over time reduce and dissolve the obstacles and carve grand canyons on the landscape?
There are times when I find myself in a stagnant pool rather than flowing. I wallow in depression, disillusionment, grief, misery... Why would anyone do that? Generally, those times come when I look on life as happening to me. My Enron retirement was stolen from me by scoundrels. Heartless employers released me from my jobs the week after the death of each of my parents. A liar scammed me online. A married man deceived me and broke my heart. My parents taught me bad lessons. All the men I've truly loved have abandoned me. God took away my parents. I've been hurt. Poor pitiful me! The pity is in staying in this dead pool...
...when I could so easily choose the running river. Living is takng responsibility for my own life -- for my behaviors and feelings about circumstances. It is about choosing to let go of the past, let go of anger, resentment, lethargy, frustration, sadness, parents, employers, men I've loved, and men who did me wrong, guilt, any feeling, any behavior, any memory, any person about who or which I feel attachment and discomfort. It is about having the faith to accept that things happen the way they are supposed to happen, and my choosing to worry or suffer or medicate or shut down in response is a poor choice and not one which will carry me along and give me opportunity for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfullness, humility, and self-control (the biblical fruits of the Spirit of an indwelling God.)
That's not to say that the choice to leave behind my warm, familiar, stagnant pool is as easy as an objective a or b decision would seem. For me there is a sense of betrayal of teachers -- even if those teachers taught bad lessons. There is often closed eyes and ears to the beauty and song of the flowing river as I bathe in the murky depths of habit. Surprisingly enough, while I am in the brack, there are not so many people out there who invite me to join their choir, or perhaps I can harmonize so well with the moans and drones of the masses who choose to be victims of life, that I, for a time, do not hear the invitation to voice the song for choice.
It is good to be going again with the flow -- the flow of the deep water that is fresh and living. It is good to see, feel, hear myself making good choices for my feelings and behaviors. It is good to be concious, aware, awake -- the auto-pilot turned off. This is choosing to live life.
Copy & paste to friend: (Click inside box; Ctrl + C to copy; Ctrl + V to paste)
|
|
read more blogs!
|
CrackerJackPat
|
Oct 29 @ 10:29AM
|
|
BALANCE...
One night in my sleep it was stamped across my forehead.
Your words created a resonance within me of many years ago myself.
I wasn't in "therapy" per se, but a "self-awareness" group where after while I came to the same conclusion as you have stated here.
I wanted to quit analyzing life for a while and just live it.
What I try to find for myself in all of this is the BALANCE. The difference of being "in the flow" and/or "caught in the current".
I remind myself frequently, "Life is what happens while we are busy planning something else." That and of course the Serenity Prayer which I first discovered in Chicago when I was 14 -- there was a plaque in a store -- serendipity?
|
|
jentoblues101
|
Oct 29 @ 11:03AM
|
|
I often use the River Analogy with my clients, explaining that they've spent most of their lives dictating where the river should take them--swimming against the current--rather than allowing themselves to give in to the river's flow, eddies, and currents. It seems when we do this, life gets so much easier, and drops gifts to help us on our journey.
I miss Martin666 already, and I'm glad you're still here with us.
Jen
|
|
beachnutRU
|
Oct 29 @ 11:30AM
|
|
I love the term auto-pilot. I especially like it turned off. As I mentioned to you, in the Adam Sandler movie, CLICK, he went into auto pilot and was just a monotonous sort of fellow. He was so sorry of his choice to be on AP later in the movie.
I was listening to Fresh Air on NPR the other day. An interview with Annette Bening. She was asked "how do you balance motherhood and an acting career and living with Warren Beatty". She responded, paraphrased. "Balance is nice and enjoyable but when excesses put you out on the edge that is where creativity is born". I can do balance only so long then I get out on the wild side of it. 
|
|
redtigr
|
Oct 29 @ 12:03PM
|
|
I read with interest your post of today. The thing that strikes me most is that does not this recurring cycle of self-analysis and renewal provide the very "balance" (as Pat said) that you seek? No one in my experience is completely happy all the time, and I do not imply that is your point or goal; but you are a seeker, and you cannot deny your nature. You have helped me to examine and process thoughts and emotions connected with my own journey. You shed light on the process itself, by your unequaled honesty; your willingness to lay it all out. That takes tremendous courage.
I hope that you might see your self-analysis in a more positive light. And as you seem always to focus eventually on the best things about your life, I am sure this is already true for you. Each of us has a metaphorical vehicle for dealing with negative or destructive thoughts. Some of us call it baggage - stored in suitcases, and lugged around with us; some refer to "locking away" negative emotions as if there were a vault for such things. I like to think of mine as clothing, sadly outgrown, no longer befitting the new me - and yet hanging around, taking up valuable space in my life. Letting go of it - giving it away - lends new meaning to a Goodwill donation. We usually find we don't even miss it when it's gone.
I just reminded myself of the movie "Good Will Hunting." Like the character in that film, often it is our perception of ourselves and how we think others see us - rather than who we really are that controls our behavior. Sometimes, self enlightenment and seeing ourselves in a more positive light requires having others help us recognize we are unique unto ourselves.
And there's that wonderful quotation: "The unexamined life is not worth living...." actually a paraphrasing of the following from Socrates' heresy trial:
"... to let no day pass without discussing goodness and all the other subjects about which you hear me talking and examining both myself and others," he felt that this activity, "is really the very best thing that a man (or women) can do, and that life without this sort of examination is not worth living ..."
Here: Hear... Even a river contains whirlpools and undercurrants; you, however, are buoyant.
|
|
redtigr
|
Oct 29 @ 12:46PM
|
|
Hmmm.. and then there's self-editing, aka proofreading ....
I mis-spelled undercurrents (I do like thinking of them as fruit preserves underwater, though) and, more importantly, I left off the credit for the Socrates quotation and commentary which is actually from Plato: The Last Days of Socrates.
|
|
lacyvsq
|
Oct 29 @ 1:36PM
|
|
Thank you for your insightful comments.
Certainly the analysis of life is necessary for me to quit that upstream swimming, to get out of those eddies and brackish pools to maneuver through the rapids and falls. For myself, perhaps I would like to redefine the process as awareness or conciousness or watchfulness rather than analysis. I think it is only with that process that any of us can continue to go with the flow, and that perhaps knowing that as our attitude, the struggle may not be so difficult and the suffering so great.
And there will probably always be struggle and suffering to cycle around and give us the desire and impetus to quantum leap from one paradigm that used to work to a new one that fits the evolving person.
|
|
unionman154
|
Oct 29 @ 3:36PM
|
|
|
we all have a cross to bear in life .iam not trying to make light of the tragedies that have happened to you .but when we are deepest in hurt and sorrow its then the Good Lord is so close to us .i couldnt live with out my faith.i truly believe that more good comes out of bad then bad if we will only look for the good most often or not its there for us to see to help us deal with the bad. i try not to dwell on the past unless there is something i think i can learn from it i try my best to keep looking forward and from your blog so do you lacy .so many go thru life in a prescription induced haze thinking that any anxiety or hurtful feelings can be solved by putting another pill in our mouths just look at the drug ad on tv there are butterflys and smiling faces all from the result of putting this pill they advertise in your mouth .americans have become addicted to the thought of instant everything and a pill to get up a pill to sleep a pill to make us happy.when everything we need is there for the asking .i believe in the power of prayer and at the same time we need to do our best to find out what life is really about .i used to sit by and let the river flow to afraid of drowning in life .sorry for the long comment lacy thank you for the insight into your feelings your in my prayers amen bye paul be good be safe
|
|
|