I received such a great email from someone who ordered a CD for a friend of theirs who just did 22 years in prison. He got his Associates Degree while in there. His real Father lied to him saying his Mother was dead but it turns out he was kidnapped by his Father. Recently, he had a reunion with his real Mother. Can you imagine the emotions in that room? Must have been awesome…
I think it’s natural to feel like something has stolen our time. For this man, I don’t know why he was in there but he did that time. The time he really had taken from him was the time with his Mother. I don’t know if he was bitter about that or excited at the potential of getting something back he thought didn’t exist to begin with.
There are two ways we can look at situations in our own life. We can harbor a lot of resentment over the thing which has been stolen or we can accept the here and now and start fresh today. This can be difficult to do. We tend to look at our own lives in terms of years and the more wasted years we string together, the more likely we are to think our life is one big useless ride.
What if this accumulation of years is all able to be cross-cancelled by a single moment? Our brains are drawn to the event or events which we feel ruined our existence but how can we talk ourselves into the notion that one moment in time could make it all worthwhile? We seem to love these reunions on reality TV shows, what if we put the same emphasis on a single moment in our lives?
When I look back on my life, the best parts have been the moments. Now I will say I wished I had more of those and I am working on making all my moments worthwhile. It’s extremely difficult to not live with regrets which we’ve discussed before but it’s equally difficult to shred the bitterness.
Getting rid of harbored anger and bitterness seems to be essential in order to make room for potential good things to happen. How can you fully enjoy this moment right now if you are spending it in an angry state, bitter towards someone who has harmed you in the past? I don’t know too many people who can experience two extreme emotions at the same time, so I think it would stand to reason that one has to go.
Those of us who have tricked our brains into thinking we can experience fullness of life and bitterness at the same time really seem to be just shoving one or the other in the back of our heads. We can sit in bitterness while one part of our brain longs to be whole again, but the split tends to be what makes us emotionally unstable and shaky every day.
Maybe the reason why we have good moments but bad years is because there is a power in the good moments which not only is strong enough to devour he bad times but our hearts are working hard to fight for it despite our obsession with the bad stuff.
So, how do we ever begin to tip the scales in favor of the good times? I think for me, I recognize that it has to be a conscious devoted effort towards making my days good. It has had to be a choice. If you have had enough bad programming and your computer is infested with virus’, it’s going to take a very strong antivirus program to wipe it out.
Moreso, I have learned that I don’t have to delete my bad memories but I can organize them better (gain perspective on them) and store them on an external hard drive where I can access them only for vital bits of information that will assist in my new program working better. If they don’t assist, they stay on back-up.
I don’t think destroying the hard drive with the bad memories serves a purpose. We like the easy fix for our issues but small cancerous cells can creep up at any time on our system in the form of bitterness and we have to be aware of that potential.
Both good and bad times make up our lives, but it’s good to remember it’s the make-up of EVERYONE’s life. We are not alone, this is how it works. The sooner I can wrap my head around this, the sooner I can gain the perspective and move on with living.
I love hearing about people having new beginnings like this man, but we all have a new beginning in every single moment, not just the big events.
I get very tired watching two emotions fighting for the space in my head, think I’ll let referee this a bit.
Betting on the good guy,
Karen :)
“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.” ~Peter Nivio Zarlenga
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