How do we deal with pain and loss? How do we deal with life
changes? Should we pursue spirituality? How should we pursue spirituality? What
political ideas should we embrace? I want to ponder life in general. Here in this blog, I will be writing about my
ponderings. I contemplated for awhile about starting a new blog. I have written
in my Martial Arts blog but I have not worked on it for over 5 years. Here is
something different. Although there might be some cross over, since Martial
Arts is a big part of my life. Many of my life lessons have come from the
experience gained from walking that path.
There are plenty of self help gurus and books that provide
advice on how we deal with the rocks that life throws at us. I am not an
expert. I am not a guru of any kind. I can’t tell you how to deal with your life. I can only talk about how I
have dealt with my adventure of life.
I have spent nearly six decades in the journey of life. Sometimes I do well.
Often, in other times I make mistakes. I will guess that is because I am just
like everyone else. I am human.
In my first post of this blog I am going to talk about paths
and choices. The paths we walk upon
because life has thrust our feet upon them. The paths were it is often very
difficult to travel. The roads of death, pain, loss, change, are the winds
blowing dust and fog across our way. These trails do not define us. How we walk
them defines us. We can’t freeze along the way. We can’t stop walking. Learning
to walk in the fog and dust is the lesson. So, we don’t forget the pain, or
death of those we love. We just keep moving through that fog of despair. It is
always there. We keep taking steps. Forward is our motion. Backwards means we
start dying to pain. Backwards leaves us in a mist of tears that can drown you
if you let it. One step, one motion, all
one at a time. We must be in the moment. We must move. We must embrace the
moment. We embrace those tears. It becomes part of us. While the mist, dust, and
fog may blind us for a time, still take it in as it is. What is, is.
Death comes to all of us. We can’t escape it. Not from the
ones we love. Not from our own end. We spend little time talking about death.
It disturbs us. We are afraid of it. Most religions are built around the ending
faced by everything that lives. The
biggest question about our ending is what happens then. Do we simply fade away?
Do we find a heaven or nirvana? Why do we not have it here in life? For those
that have true faith life does not end. That is what their faith in their
religion demands of them. Even in that faith we mourn the passing of family and
friends. We see those parts of our world disappear. Our memories of what once was,
is all we have left. We keep walking and we keep living. The path takes a new course. The course the
path takes depends totally on the decisions we make. It is a choice. We don’t
have to “get over it”. We take the experiences with us on the journey.
Sometimes the load we carry is light. Sometimes it is heavy. Light or heavy we
carry it. How is it managed? That question is not answerable. We all perceive
the world within our own souls. How you perceive something will dictate how you
can and will handle it. Follow your intuition your heart, and back that
following with knowledge. We can believe in divinity. We can believe divinity
might guide us. However knowledge of the divinity is not true knowledge. The
divine cannot be known. The divine is an experience. Faith can be that
experience. Faith can also be the search for that experience of the divine.
Some call it God. The name does not matter. The search, the experience, and the
path taken are beyond the name we place upon it.
Is how we live our lives important? You often hear people
everywhere talk about how bad their job is. How bad and terrible their life is.
All these complaints stem from only one thing. Your life is where it is because
of the choices that have been made. Yes, many things are out of our control.
However, how we react to bombs and the craters made on our path are a choice.
We can step into the crater and stay there. We can whine about the crater we
decided to live in. Our whining won’t release us. In fact many times we dig
further down into the crater. Whining and complaining are the shovels we use to
dig that hole deeper. Instead build a ladder with thoughts of acceptance of
what is. Be sad, grieve as you should. As the tears fall grab the ladder. Climb out of the hole. Grab the sadness and
put in a back pack. Carry it with you. As you keep walking on the path your
load becomes lighter. You will gain the strength to carry it. If you decide to stay trapped in the crater,
you will drown in that hole with your own tears, complaints, and whining. When
you decide to climb out of despair, disappointment, and grief you find the joy
in life. This does not mean grief, disappointment, and despair disappears. It
means you condition yourself to carry on with it.
Anger is another theme we often see people live in. They are
angry at everything. These individuals take out their anger on all the souls
they encounter. They spit out negativity to service people in the store or on
the phone. Driving down the road angry flaming words and gestures are thrown
out to strangers. Scowls of impatience are given to people that might be
interrupting our all too important business.
The world is infested with a “me first attitude”. The attitude of “I
must get them before they get me” is a sickness that creates inequality,
bigotry, fighting, violence, and war. There are so many pains of life that we do not
address. Instead pain is pushed down. Then like a volcano the pain erupts as
anger. It burns all who happen to be present. In my experience anger is
contagious. Anger is like a torch passed from one to another spreading like a
wild fire. The world has seen an extreme case of this. The insane anger of
Hitler drove an entire world to war. Being angry is normal, it is human. The
danger is not recognizing the source of our anger. When we become engulfed in
ongoing anger, never dealing or resolving the sources of our hurt, frustration,
and disappointment is the toxin. The mind can be easily led to a darkness of
negativity when anger remains untended. The reason for the anger must be identified
and resolved. Allowing the festering boil of anger to be ignored is the
beginning of a plague that can and has destroyed lives. The destruction could
be personal or can be a widespread world holocaust.
The causes of anger are endless. The loss of a job can cause
anger. We can maybe see that a company sent our job to another country. So, now
the anger is directed at the people who now hold the job we once depended on. Is
it that person’s or peoples’ fault? Of course it is not. It is the fault of
those who made the decision. The decision is beyond our control. Having
something beyond our control is frustrating.
Frustration leads to anger. Now every person that is from a land where
the job was sent is the focus of that anger. It isn’t justified. Those people
need work just as much and maybe more than those who lost positions. Here,
again is where choice takes us out of darkness. We can choose to do what it
takes to find new work. We can also choose to wallow in self pity. Anger and negativity can't be allowed to take
hold. Soon it rules our lives. Long after the cause of anger has faded to
nothingness it festers and spills into words and deeds. The blame will be
placed on whoever or whatever happens to be in the wake of our discontent.
What about grief and death? The grief we feel at the loss of
a loved one can also turn to great anger. It could be anger at a disease that
caused the death of someone close. It can take on the form of vengeance against
the cause or person’s that took a life away from you. If the grief is not recognized, identified,
and resolved anger can become the feeling that has a foundation of grief. Suddenly
the grief stricken person expresses their depth of emotion through anger. Every
unpleasant issue becomes a battle that must be fought. They fight with
negativity. They throw out words and actions at others perceived to be against
them. These individuals live a very sad life. Every obstacle in their way
becomes another person’s, event, or group’s fault. The mind becomes a twisted
mess of anger. Strife becomes something that comes from beyond the personal
choice. The truth is: negative thinking brings strife, sadness, conflict, and a
crushing heaviness to life fulfilling progress.
We all know it is impossible to always be positive within
our emotions. Positivity, though, should not be thought of as a momentary
passing moment. Positivity should be viewed as a way to live. Look at each
roadblock and each obstacle as a challenge to overcome. Look for the
resolution. Be confident that setbacks are temporary. Yes, sometimes we might
need to change something basic to our path. However, we never give up. We see
the end goal as something obtainable. It isn’t easy. It is hard. We march on
towards our goals. We see the journey as worthwhile. Here is where the
enjoyment of life lives. We have something to gain. We have a goal to work
on. The moment we have where the goal
and our life dreams come closer into focus is where happiness flourishes. Where
happiness and enjoyment end is the place anger and negativity win the day.
Blame of everything and everyone for a failure is the negative. Take the blame
away. Look to the failure to learn the lesson. The lesson is that maybe our
goal and dream of life needs to be mapped differently. Blame never solves a
challenge or problem. Looking for solutions and lessons gets us past or over
the wall of failure. Pain is inevitable. How we internalize pain is what
matters. We can swim with that pool of pain. Anger can be the water tread in. We
can choose to be different. The life
preserver of hope is what can be clung to. As we search for answers we know
that within that hope success is found. Hope keeps our head above water. Hope
keeps us from drowning in the sewer of pain and negativity.
Talking about death we find ourselves surrounded by
emotional negativity. All is a normal reaction to the tragedy of death. Death
reaches us all. Death reminds us of our own mortality. We can conquer death by
living in a way that honors the memory of lost loved ones. The loved ones that
have passed would want us to live on and be happy. Live in the love of those
whose death we mourn. Press on, live on. Do not let the loss of someone put
your life on hold. We must grieve, but do not grieve in a stagnant pond. Still
follow your bliss, follow a life you choose to live. This is my formula for
dealing with loss. I know I have a choice. The choices I make impact my life. Take
on failure as a lesson. We can make the choice to break free of negativity. We
can unlock the chains of sadness by embracing and celebrating the life we have.
Hope and forward movement will keep the drowning madness at bay.
I will talk about goals on the next entry. Thank you for
taking the time to read my ramblings.
