Sometimes life sucks, like, really sucks. The worst. Horrible. Upheaval. Uproar. Chaos. Lethargy. An undesirable status quo that cannot seem to shift. But what I’ve come to experience, is that even in situations like these, when life really sucks, it doesn’t. Now there’s a paradox, I know. But, what if it isn’t?
What if that which is a human being can never really be defined in one single emotion? I mean. I’ve had some serious issues to think about lately, and if you focus only on those, yeah, life is really hard, massive, heavy, uncertain. But life as a whole? No. I didn’t experience it as such. This particular area of life, yes, there I had issues. There was uncertainty and fear, feeling alone and vulnerable. But those weren’t the pervasive emotions of my experience of life as a whole, or possibly, of capital-L Life.
I discovered this as I was having lunch with a friend. We had an honest and very open conversation and as I told my story, as I explained the issues I was facing, I felt very calm. Totally centered.
Was asked Oh, poor you, that must be so hard?
And, almost surprisingly, the answer from me, was No. Not at all. I don’t experience this situation hard at all. Uncertain yes. But not scary, not hard. Just uncertain. And it will resolve itself, one way or the other, and regardless of how it will come to be, it will be fine. I will be fine.
Now, I’ve never felt this calm in a correspondingly serious situation before. Never. And on another note, what’s a serious situation? Why do I put that label on the situation? What if it’s just a situation, no more, no less. A situation, that’s all. Not serious. Not minor. Not important. Not insignificant. Simply a situation, to deal with. Perhaps, that’s the key? Might that be the reason why I felt such calm and confidence in the situation? Because I truly didn’t weight the issue down, internally, with the label Serious? It was a situation that was in need of being resolved, but I had no real deadline for it, I wasn’t in any rush, had no sense that I had to get on with it. Was fine with letting it evolve, letting go and letting come, uncover what was to happen.
I’ve never been more gentle to me, than in this situation.
Wow. What a statement.
Imagine the amount of energy I would have spent on trying to resolve the issue, on wrangling to make the outcome a specific way – the way I would have decided was The Right Way – if this would have happened five, ten, fifteen years ago. An enormous amount! Trust me on this. And now – most of that energy was available for other things, activities, experiences, emotions. Some of the energy, yes. Of course there were moments of hard effort, of wishing that what Is wasn’t, but so much less than I would have spent in the past.
I’ve never been more gentle to me, than in this situation. What a gift!
First published on my blog on May 25th, 2016: https://helenaroth.com/being-gentle-to-me-reflection-may-16/
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Audio production: Caspian Almerud
Photography: Anders Roos http://www.andersroos.nu/
Soundtrack: Olof Jennfors Ljudtjänst http://jennforsljud.se/