Things I have done to make my life much easier

My life became far less “stressful” which could for some be replaced with “shameful” when I accepted that I have some spatial issues and, in some areas, they have improved significantly. But sometimes, especially if I am tired/preoccupied or distracted, they are more likely to happen. When they do, I have learned to laugh and typically will make some sort of outrageous joke “did you see how that wall just jumped right over and attacked me?”  and I encourage others to laugh with me. There is nothing to be ashamed of here. 

Feather’s Fun Fact: I had a mentor who would have categorized this as one of the “great truths of the universe” and that is: all of us walk around with an “imaginary audience” of people who are watching and judging everything we do, and if we do something, such as walk into fixed objects, we tend to have this momentary internal panic attack that we have just done something that will cause our audience to critique and judge us harshly. What the reality is can be broken down into two simple concepts. 1) Everyone else is walking around worried about the same thing and thus not paying a darn bit of attention to what you may or may not be doing and in all likelihood have not even noticed 2) If you are a human person, at some point or another, you have and you will make a mistake. Because perfection is an idealized concept and therefore an illusion and therefore does not exist. That is reality. You can argue with that concept, or with me over that concept, and I am not saying that you can’t or you won’t, and it’s possibly likely you’re doing that right now as you are reading this, but life is a lot easier when you don’t argue with reality. Why should you care? Well, I am not saying that you SHOULD do anything. I am saying that if you have a child who is prone to behavioral outbursts or doing things that others would consider to be “unusual” in public settings, as the parent/caregiver/guardian of that child, you may find those actions embarrassing and or shameful. This is something that is not a pleasant emotion and what eventually happens more often than not is that your child will also begin to feel shame and they may not understand precisely what caused it, but it can lead to all sorts of feelings of inadequacy and low self-worth, none of which I would imagine are things that you want your child to carry nor are they things that you want to carry. You don’t have to. You have the power to make that choice.   

Speaking of choices, I also have realized that I get to make choices every single day. Some allow for more options than others, but I still have options. The biggie for me was realizing that perspective is absolutely everything. We don’t control our thoughts, they happen. What we do control is the meaning we assign to them and whether they are good, bad, etcetera. We can also control how we look at previous events that have happened, and we can give them the power to control us, or we can essentially detach ourselves from them (this is a learning curve and a process, it does sound very simple, which it is. That doesn’t mean it easy necessarily. That’s a relatively fine distinction, but it is an important one) look at it for what it was, and what I like to do is to see what I learned and how that has or is in the process of shaping me. Because then, no matter how terrible it was, I still gained something valuable. I didn’t lose a piece of myself. Some of my best teachers have been the ones who taught me exactly how I never want to treat another living being, that I despise hypocrisy, that if you’re in a helping profession and the only person whose interest concerns you is your own, maybe you’re in the wrong profession. Those were the ones that taught me more about who I am because they taught me exactly what I am not nor ever want to become. I can say the exact same thing about my family or origin. My biological parents taught me absolutely everything that I will never do. That could sound rebellious, or overly radical. However, there are certain types of family dynamics that ultimately leave children from these families with really only one of two choices: they can repeat the cycle, and do exactly what was done to them to their own children or they can break the cycle completely and typically they do not have families of their own (for good reason) and often will dedicate the remainder of their lives in some way that is associated with things that are they are fighting against with the types of things they experienced. Option A is much more common. I would be option B. And I am grateful to be option B. I am so fortunate that I can say I walked away from what I have, but look what I have learned because I can share it with others so they don’t have to learn some of these lessons the absolute hardest way possible. 

I am not someone who offers unsolicited advice, I don’t even particularly care for solicited advice. I like to think of it as offering someone information that has already been determined to be potentially useful, discussing which, if any, of these options that might be a good or potentially even better fit would be, but ultimately, I am not going to ever be an expert on anyone else’s life. This includes how or what they SHOULD think, feel, do, and I also am the last human person in the universe who is qualified to judge anyone for anything ever. Theoretically, the only ones we have enough context, information, and any right to judge is ourselves. Which even that isn’t always true, because we can have lived our entire lives having believed lies that have been fed to us. 

From our family of origin, society, particular peers, our friends, our partner, our kids, our spiritual leader in any specific organization, anyone. I am not saying that we don’t, because the human brain is absurdly good at doing that, and it was evolved in a way that has helped to perpetuate that. I also realize that I had best clarify that statement: judging things such as “is this person safe to be around, is this person safe to have around my children, is this person someone I would like to work with” are entirely different and not at all what I mean. Yes, in terms of making judgments as to our surroundings and our safety and that of our loved ones, we should definitely attempt to determine to the best of our ability those individuals with whom we are going to entrust vulnerable pieces of ourselves, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically. What I was specifically attempting to define is that so many of us run into areas of difficulty in our lives when we judge someone against ourselves with the intent on determining that one individual is right/good/bad/wrong/acceptable/unacceptable et cetera. Sometimes we will do this about our own circumstances as well. 

If I were to have a lobotomy and then jump on Facebook (the lobotomy would be necessary in order for me to utilize that for anything strictly other than something business, preferably managed by not myself) I have no desire to look up people I didn’t particularly enjoy sharing the same classroom with, let alone have a conversation all these years later, reach out to them only to determine if that is still the case, or to determine if they really were the “most likely to…”. I have learned that it’s not remotely worth the time, effort, or essentially that there would be absolutely nothing I could take away from such an encounter that no matter what was said, or I saw, would make me any happier about myself, my life, and if I were looking to see how based on those specific areas that society tends to consider to be benchmarks of being “successful” I measure up to anyone, the potential for unhappiness or pain or feeling less than/inferior is likely to be high, particularly since many people present the image that they would like to portray, not necessarily the truth. 

So, I already know that my data is likely to be misleading. I realize that lots of people love social media and feel it has positive benefits, and if that holds true, fabulous. I am illustrating that I know myself well enough to know there are certain things that would likely at best take what little free  time I have that could be better put elsewhere, only to  prove to myself what I suspected, or equally if not more so likely, to reopen doors that I prefer remain shut. That’s just me. Maybe at some point I will feel differently, I have changed tremendously since high school. I am always going to continue to grow with new opportunities and experiences and knowledge, so I can’t say that I would never under any circumstances do that, but for now, I don’t see a reason to.