"Many times what we perceive as an error or failure is actually a gift. And eventually, we find that lessons learned from that discouraging experience prove to be of great worth." -Richelle E. Goodrich
I was inspired to write about the concept of making a mistake. I haven't posted in a while because every time I've sat down to write recently, it's gone to a dark place, and there's a little bit of a conflict within me because I don't want to put dark things out in the universe. However, in my last post, I wrote about being okay in the darkness, accepting the Yin and Yang cycle, without fighting against the down times. I wrote that the darkness can open you up to deeper emotions, deeper lessons and that everything is always okay even when you’re down. Life is so funny because now what I wrote about has come to fruition. I’m in the dark place so here is where the rubber meets the road.
There are no mistakes. I've heard that many times in this journey and for me the saying points directly to trust and surrender. Trusting in the process and surrendering to All That Is. And it's not the easiest thing to do for me by far. However, I wouldn't be authentic if I told someone to do it when I wrote about it and I couldn't do it myself, or at least I couldn't talk about it. I made a mistake recently or what I perceive as a mistake, and I want to write about. I want to talk myself through it in the hopes of not only helping me now but also helping someone out there in the future.
I was in a car accident that was completely my fault. I took my eyes off the road because was punching in coordinates into Google maps on my cell phone and hit a parked car. No one was injured but the car was totaled. I can't help but think I made a stupid mistake, that is the first thought that comes to me. While it was happening, I did not beat myself up. In the moment I was very present, very in the now, cooperated with the person whose car I hit and with the police. However, now that I'm reeling from the hangover of what is going to happen with the car and all that stuff, I can't help but beat myself up. That is where my habit of thought goes when something happens like this.
I am attempting to find the purpose of my guilt, what do I get out of it? I think the idea is that if I beat myself up hard enough, maybe this won't happen again. So if I make myself feel bad enough it will imprint my cells with the guilt so that when I even think of looking at my phone and driving again I will feel that terrible guilt and avoid it. Problem solved right? Yeah...except for the fact that I have to feel horrible for this to work. It's as if my mind is trying to solve a problem and has identified the problem as me! Even though it was an accident because obviously, I didn't intend to wreck the car. I feel like it could have been easily corrected, and I keep running the scenarios over and over again in my mind. What if I had just done this or I really should have done that etc.
Here's the thing. What I'm really doing is arguing with reality. The reality is it happened and there's no amount of thinking about it, there is no number of scenarios I could run that will undo reality. So why do I feel the need to punish myself because it's obviously a no-win scenario? I can’t punish myself enough into feeling better about it.
I believe this guilt and anxiety is because I think things should be different than what they are. I haven't written too much about the word 'should' but at one point in time, I attempted to eliminate it from my vocabulary altogether. Because what happens is when you say the word 'should' you're arguing with reality and you will lose that argument 100% of the time. The reality is it happened. And to say it should be different means you know better than All That Is or the Universe or God or Source, whatever your name for it is. One of my favorite writers, Byron Katie's, definition of God is real because reality shows you what God wants.
To follow that train of thought means that what happened is what should have happened. Therein lies the paradox that my mind has trouble with. If this is what was supposed to happen then why did it? I have a belief, though sometimes faint, that everything is working out for my benefit, that things happen for me not to me, that this will somehow be a good thing. But I just can't see the good in this because I'm so in the moment and I’m still licking my wounds. Perhaps with time, my perspective will change but for now, it just seems to suck. However, not having a car at this moment maybe saves me from some future calamity. Maybe if I had gotten any further down the road, or to the freeway, I would have been killed. Maybe I will meet an Uber driver who changes my life forever. Maybe this sets into motion a chain of events that will change the trajectory of my life or removes some blockage I’m not seeing. That is the true work, to let go of my mind scrambling to figure it all out and just trust. Even if that means trusting the process while I’m in this dark place and I do not feel good about myself.
Yet, I know that I'm loved. I know that I am safe, and I know I don't want to beat myself up. I don't want to be unhappy. I keep writing this almost in every post, what I want is to be happy. There's no reason I can't be happy now except for these circling thoughts that tell me how I should be better, how I should be smarter, how I should be different than I am, how I shouldn't have done these things, how I'm not good enough, how I’m not smart enough. That the world will see the truth, that I'm an idiot all because I made a mistake.
I notice that I have a choice. I can either accept that there are no mistakes, that this happened for a reason, and be grateful that I am ok which starts to make me feel better and shift toward happiness. Or I can choose to think that things should be different, that I shouldn't have done that, that it was so stupid, to continue to beat myself up and feel terrible about myself. Put in that context it makes so much sense to let go. The fact that I walked away with just some scrapes is amazing, no matter how it happened. It's miraculous.
What if there really are no mistakes and everything is in its right place? I find myself here questioning all that I am and the Universe as a whole. Because to say there are no mistakes means that all the things that we consider bad in this universe were supposed to happen, and that is a shocking revelation. It is the most extreme I have ever imagined taking trust and surrender. To truly let go of all judgment and to say that these bad things should have happened. Or that there is no good or bad there just is.
Maybe it just means that nothing needs to be different for me to be happy
There was a line from the Tao Te Ching: Do you want to improve the world? I don’t think it can be done. The world is sacred, it can’t be improved. If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it. If you treat it like an object, you’ll lose it. I take that to mean that everything's in its right place. Everything is moving fluidly together in perfect order and that there are no mistakes. It is only our human mind that perceives things from a limited view that wants to fix things. The human mind is a problem solver, but I refuse to look in the mirror and see a problem. I will not make an enemy out of the person I love the most.
So, I am here now, in the darkness making a conscious decision to trust, to trust that everything is okay. I choose to trust that everything in my life has happened for a reason. I choose to trust that everything that has ever happened has happened because it's supposed to be that way, that all things are playing out perfectly. I choose to trust in myself, in the universe that created me, and in love. I choose love. I choose happiness. I choose unconditional love of me, and of everything. I choose to believe that what I've written here today will not just help me but someone else somewhere soon.
Good Journey, My Friends.
