Almost every time I go through a thing I like to document my internal struggles like normal folks do with a diary...except my diary is open for all to see (Yes...i know I've written that numerous times but new folk come and go here). When I read this back, it's informative to me. I can see where my mindset change failed or succeeded. I can see where God intervened in unexpected ways and I can also see when every footstep seems to be unnecessarily staggering on flat roads. What does this mean? It means that where I should be concentrated on the road ahead...I'm looking at externals that surround me. Externals that can actually turn my win...into a perceived loss. This allows me to self-correct and to adjust where others would not. It helps to train my focus where it belongs as opposed to obsessing over silly things that really don't need my input any longer to work themselves out.
This is called self-awareness. At first, it takes us a few hits of [insert trial here] to self-reflect and adjust but after a while, it becomes instinctive...and you just do it. Too many have the idea that people that seem to walk in straight lines are "rocks"...nothing troubles or bothers them. That they must know something you don't...uh huh. What do I know that you don't? That the quicker you recover from your stagger, the less the stagger is seen. What once took me two weeks to figure out, now takes me seconds to days. Shorter time periods that prevent you from seeing me stagger from the hits. So naturally I look like what? Like I never even flinch at the hits. The quicker you recover, the quicker you press on. It doesn't mean that I don't go through what you go through. I just go through the hard stuff faster. It's just a testament to how many times I've been through a thing and have come to grow from it. Understand something my beautiful people: an 80 lb dumbbell doesn't stop being an 80 lb dumbbell just because you've become stronger...it's still 80 lbs.
It is human to feel pain but it is also human to know how to identify how much farther you can go under its duress before you need to seek help for it. As a baby, you are expected to cry for something you want. As an infant, you are expected to ask. As a teenager, you are expected to try to get it yourself, with the available option to ask if you can't. As an adult...you are expected to be able get it for yourself and for others. Every step moving upward in the ladder of existence...becoming more every time. The learn-ed of this age for some reason have taken to teaching the stunting of growth. To become "stuck" on what we feel and to enter into a cycle of despair we learn to "live with"...and call that "healing". The addict is taught that they will always be in "recovery". A process that I truly feel has more to do with job security than health care. I am one that believes we never stop growing and that recovery is only one step of every phase of growth. After recovery...there should come an adaptation. Some folk want to keep you on "recovery"...not me. Get up and take the next step...
Face your test or trial, stare down every feeling and emotion (feel what you need to feel-VERY important)...dissect each one. Find their place inside and reconcile (or discard) each one based on who you really are. At first, it's an ardent process that demands self-denial and looking at yourself from the outside in but it gets easier in practice over time. Using reason, truth and experience...you come to add what you've learned to the arsenal, character or passion that defines your existence. You grow...and you grow the way you are meant to. Not textbook like Johnny or Sue...like YOU are meant to.
In this phase of "shedding" (letting go) you've been reading me moan about, I have come to the conclusion that not all my "shedding" will be of my own making. That some skin will fall off on its own...or eventually become something that fits on me better than skin. Better than anything I could have even thought up. That maybe all the skin I've been tempted to peel off is undergoing a process of its own that will eventually come into a beautiful alignment with my newly formed skin, bones, heart and mind. I come to this conclusion and remember the many times I've been told "don't pick at it or it will get infected and/or leave a scar". Well my beautiful people, I've shed A LOT. As for the rest...I'm done pickin. Oh!!! that analogy was good!!!...i'm out...
~moses apollo
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