I oft wonder what kind of trauma I carry from childhood. As despite somewhat being okay now, I also know that in order to survive life to this point, I have had to push a lot of things to the side and into the background, because there just wasn't the energy or mental and emotional bandwidth to deal with it at the time. It is less about burying emotions though, and more about prioritising what was necessary at the time. Left untreated, forgotten, or repressed however, doesn't mean that the impact is lost - it just isn't well understood.
It is an interesting conflict for me personally, because for most of my life I have explored life itself and my role within it. But, again due to human and personal limitation, I am prone to focusing my attention on what I felt was necessary and important at the time. That is a slippery slope, because we tend to tend to what we want, rather than what we need. And the ore we do so, the ore blind we become to the needs, even though we are not getting the results we want from what we are focusing on. That is a mindful, but hopefully you get what I mean with it.
Most people I talk with don't seem to be that satisfied with their current circumstances, but I do think that many of them are more accepting of the conditions than I am. I look to improve conditions rather than settling for what the current state of affairs are, which also means that I tend not to celebrate or even really acknowledge progress, because there is always the next step. I try to be mindful of this, especially with my daughter, but I find that I struggle heavily with it myself. Sometimes I do okay at something, but it is never good enough to praise myself for it.
I generally see self-praise as self-absorption and self-centeredness, but I am coming around to the idea that at least in some scenarios, it is part of a healthy self-development process, especially when there is very little external praise coming in. For instance, I am quite critical of the current condition of health I experience, but if I were to compare myself to many others in my age group, I am not doing too badly. Even more so considering the various challenges I have faced. I don't find comparison helpful for my own development, but what I think it does highlight is how many of us limit our abilities with various excuses, when someone who has some more valid reasons "not to" is still able to do it.
Be kind.
I am definitely not kind to myself and it sets up a cycle of self-imposed punishment, guilt, shame or whatever else could fit into that category. I accept that everyone has their journey, but when it comes to my own path, I am critical of where I have been, how I dealt with it, where I am, how I am dealing with it, and where I might go, and how I am facing it. I know I should focus on one action and climb one tree at a time, but I often get lost in the forest. I see the big picture, but that is not where our actions lay. Actions add up and compound, but are singular. They are in a series, but also stand alone. When lost in the forest, reference points are needed in order to choose a direction. The sun, the stars, the lichen that grows thicker on the north side.
But reference and direction is useless without action to follow the trail. To step one task at a time through to the next reference point, the next decision factor. Up until that reference point is found, the tasks remain the same, one at a time until new information becomes available. And I wonder how many signs I have missed along the way through life, because I was focusing on the wrong things. Rather than creating the sight to identify opportunity, my childhood forced me to look primarily at risks, and avoid them. This is not a good strategy, because risks are everywhere, but not all risks should be avoided.
We cannot avoid risk completely. But we can pick and choose what risks we are willing to face. And for me at least, therein lays a big problem, because the risks I tend to choose are those that offer very little in return. It minimises exposure, by maximising mediocrity. And this middling path has left me where I had always feared I would end up, constrained, limited, living in reserve.
Or is that living in reverse?
From the day we are born, we are already dying, so a case could be made that we are indeed living life in reverse. I still believe it matters how we live though, at least to us as an individual. Up until now, I have not lived the life I have wanted, or even one that I can be content with. It has not been the journey I had imagined, intended, or even close to what I desired. It is not without its good sides of course, as not all things are entirely bad, but is there enough of a life to say it was worth being alive?
We are all affected by those foundational years in childhood, the food we eat, the environment we experience, the way people treat us. And as we start to develop our own thoughts and opinions as we grow through childhood, we begin to evaluate and validate who we are by telling ourselves a story of meaning, causes, and how it has affected us. Even when we don't consciously build that story, we are still building our thoughts, beliefs and actions around a narrative. But that narrative is always a lie, never the truth. There is nothing objective in it, only perspective.
I guess I need to change the narrative.
Because while I created it, I don't think much of it is actually mine.
Taraz
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