Breaking the shackles

I have had a strained relationship with my in-laws for as long as I have known them. It's been hard. I used to think I was the only one having that hard time but as time went on and I grew and learnt, I realized that I cannot possibly be the only one. As long as there are two sides, the problem and the pain associated belong to both sides. So does the solution, I used to think. But I have learnt differently since.

I have learnt that a problem can be created by one person solely due his or her responses to a particular event, situation and people. I have also learnt that these problems usually tend to get spread around. It's like a net being cast in the ocean. It not only catches the fish its meant for, but also the fish they don't want and other debris. A person who has a problems, due to their misery, anger and many other emotions, tend to cast a net around them and it catches people. I have learnt that we get caught in them, because of our lack of awareness and lack of skillfulness in our own responses. Therefore, I have also learnt that a solution can be found all on your own. It does not have to involve everybody.

It's taken me many years. Agonizing, painful years to recognize these facts. It's taken me many angry moment filled with pure hatred and a need to seek revenge and bring hurt upon those who have hurt me. But I have to a great degree been able to shrug them off over the last 11 years. Today I feel a sense of freedom I haven't felt in years. I may not have that tomorrow. But I know I have that today. 

I am writing this blog, so that I may share how I have come to this point.

As I said before, it's been hard, difficult and painful. I have experienced negative emotions that I never thought I had. But through them all I recognized that there is no room for blame. There is absolutely no room for being a victim. I recognized how easy it is to blame the other. For saying hurtful things, for showing that you are never good enough, for making others believe that you are the problem and for many others things. It's easy to say, "she is a mean person, they are bad" so on and on. I used to do that. But where did that leave me? I was fanning my own anger, hatred and the need to keep on hating. 

I also recognized that it's easy to be the victim. The moment you put the blame on the other person, you immediately become their victim. Poor me! I was a "poor me" for just as long as I blamed them for my misery. I was the perfect victim of terrible in-laws who were hell bent on hurting their only daughter-in-law. As long as I remained the victim, I would not make an effort NOT to be a victim. Everything they said or did, made me more and more of a victim. And it was as if I were chained against my will. But I learnt that this too is what my mind made up in order to prevent me from taking responsibility for the things I do, and how I feel. As long as I was the victim, I could do equally mean things, and put the responsibility back at them and they were the reason that made me do these terrible things that I would not normally do.

I recognized that, those who hurt others, are people who are in deep hurt themselves. It's difficult to make others unhappy, if you are a happy person. Only unhappy people make others unhappy. I learnt that I too was that unhappy person. Yes, of course my in-laws were unhappy as well. But that was no longer my responsibility. My responsibility was that I was allowing myself to get unhappy. As a result I was spreading my own unhappiness on to others. 

I recognized that I, only I am responsible for how I feel. It's a very difficult truth to come to terms with. I don't think I still fully comprehend the depth of it. But I know vaguely that I am responsible for it and as long as I am blaming someone or being someones victim, I allow them to play me, so to speak.

I recognized how exhausted I felt because of all these things. It's like an emotional roller coaster ride. Emotional roller coaster rides are not pleasant at all. They take you from one moment of joy to another moments misery. One moments peace and love to another moments flaming anger. It take a toll on you after a while. I think somewhere during my time, I started seeing the ride. The ups-and-downs. The toll it took on me and my emotional make up. I was like a prisoner of my own thoughts. I did not like that. I always sought freedom and I seemed to be doing the opposite. 

I recognized that I no longer need to be a prisoner of my own thoughts and emotions. I also recognized that I don't always have to believe in my own thoughts, especially if they lead me down a miserable road. I realized that my thoughts and emotions are like the clouds. They appear and then they disappear. They never stay long enough or with the same shape to give itself meaning. I realized that my game of victim and blaming, made me want to give these fleeting thoughts and emotions a great meaning. It felt right. It was justified. From all angles it was right and that is how things work normally, perhaps. But somewhere down the road, I realized this need to hold on to these fleeting things is the reason why I ride these constant emotional rides. Does not matter how they are triggered; does not matter who triggered them; does not matter whether there is logic to it or not (and usually there is plenty of logic), I do not need to take ownership of them.

It's hard to do this. Not to take ownership of my thoughts and emotions. Because you begin to wonder what to believe in anymore. Are you supposed to doubt yourself? Actually, the only rule that I use these days is that, if my thoughts and emotions no matter how right or justified I feel they are, if they make me even the slightest bit uneasy or negative, then they cannot be justified. How can I justify making myself feel unhappy?

Learning all of this took me a long time and much time with myself, looking within and questioning and investigating. I feel the clouds parting. But I also know it's also going to be fleeting. But the fact that I feel this sense of freedom and ease, has to be right. If I feel at peace what more could I possibly want for myself. Then by that truth alone, what has brought me to this point must be a good thing. That means not being a victim, blaming others, needing to give justification to my thoughts and emotions are not necessarily good things.

That means I have to change how I live my life. That means I have to change the map with which I live my life or have lived it thus far. It's hard doing it. It's almost like going back to basics and starting all over. It feels as if I am walking towards the unknown. I feel scared. I feel worried that I might take a bad stumble along the way. But I'm not sure whether I should continue live and think the way I used to either. 

So I have learnt that you need to constantly unlearn and relearn. It's hard when you are closing in on your 40s. But I also feel that there is no other choice. I mean I can chose to live caught up in my thoughts and emotions, blaming others, being victimized or I can chose to move on into the light, into that sense of ease. I think I like that sense of ease much better. I am happier that way.

I have been very fortunate to have had the support of some of the  most wisest of people during the last 11 years of my life. I could not be here if not for them. They have been like pillars and net of support from time to time. They have allowed me to lean on them when I needed to and allowed to me to fall on them when I needed to also. I must believe that I will continue to have that no matter where I go, so that I may push through my fears and self doubts. If not the path is a hard one and a lonely one. So I dedicate the last 11 years of my life to them. I also hope that in writing this and publishing this, would allow someone to make this experience a supportive pillar and a net too.

Recognition here and now

A few weeks ago, I was watching a repeat episode of Grey's Anatomy. It showed a pregnant woman being brought to the ER following a car accident. She was talking, joking and despite the worries of the doctors, seemed to be doing perfectly well. So the doctors try to figure out what is going on. Finally the doctors request an MRI just to clear her. While she is on the MRI table she codes and is rushed to the OR and dies. 

The doctors final explanation is that, she seemed fine and alive and lucid because her body was in a state of shock after the accident and adrenaline was keeping her going. This also made her unaware of the extend of her injuries to her body. But when all the noise quietened during the MRI scan while she was on the table, her body had time to relax and come to terms with the seriousness of the injuries she had sustained during the accident. That is when she died.

The moment I heard this I thought :- Do we not live our lives in the same manner?

I feel that most people these days live on an adrenaline rush. This is because our lives and the world around it move at such a speed. From the moment we wake up we are on the go. Get ready in the morning, eat, if you have kids, feed and dress them up, go to work, drop off kids, make through the day from one meeting to another or one phone call to another, come home or meet friends, do dinner, clean up, shower and go to bed and put everyone to bed. Weekends are worse. So, the body is constantly moving. The mind must move with it to keep up. Like during an accident. Like when we are caught in a current. We are pushed and pulled along with the current. The speed of it keeps carrying us. Life does the same to all of us. It is like a current. Keeps carrying us. And there is no time to think. 

It's a mad rush. A run on adrenaline. The only time we are made to stay in one place is when we are sick, or we get too old to do the samethings we did at the same pace when we were younger. But at that point, just like the woman who was unaware to her fatal injuries, we suddenly become conscious of it. Then we die. Sometimes literally but for the most part we become angry, depressed, hopeless, fault finding...a myriad of things.

We have no choice when we get to the point of lying on the table and recognizing the extent of our wounds. It's already too late. Most us try to live life backwards. Regretting, remembering a past that is lost and gone, make up for lost times, right the wrongs....but life cannot be lived backwards. It's just not made that way. Life is not even made for the future. Where we wish on and plan endlessly, only to recognize that it might not unfold the way we wanted. Life is made for right now. All that matters is what we are and what we do and say right now. 

When we are living right now, we have a choice. We can act. We don't have to regret, mourn for something that went wrong, try to make wrongs, rights. Neither do we have to wish for things to be better. We can make it better right now. Right now we can feel things and change things. The choice is only available right now. If we can be alive right now, not be lost in the fog of the past or that of the future, we will begin to see clearly and feel clearly. 

It's like the woman, if she gave away to the pain of her injuries, the depth of them, perhaps the doctors would have rushed her along, without wasting time for they would have known well in time that something really bad has happened to her. 

In the same way, if we allow ourselves to live right now, we might recognize that we are caught in a current, that it is dragging us further and further away from the shore. That struggling against is only going to exhaust us until such time the current ends and we have not strength to swim back. Or we don't even know we are caught in a current, we swim along jolly well until we feel what we are in and fear engulfs us and we drown in fearful desperation. Either way the end brings us no happy ending. 

Perhaps there is no happy ending either way. 

But when we can become aware of our predicament, we start generating choices. It's how we operate. The awareness for most is the most painful of all. Because it opens our minds and eyes to the reality. Sometimes the reality is not pleasant. Like the woman with the injuries. The coping mechanism was to be oblivious so that she could feel no pain. But that alone killed her. So it's better to feel than not feel. I know many people living life, thinking they are happy,  only because they have numbed themselves to the realities of life. But that can happen and go one for so long. When the dust settles, it's going to get ugly. 

So might as well wake up and feel the pain, so that you can generate the choices to get out of it or stay it, whichever is the best scenario. But we need to live right now for that. Without the present right in front of you, you cannot find your choices. Without the choices, you are simply being dragged by the currents of life. 

Believe you me, it will drag us in its merry path. But when all settles, when we are sick in bed, or waiting to die, when we finally recognize what has really happened, it gets a bit too late to act. It get harder to act. TI gets that much harder to do something to reverse course because time is something that will not wait on us. That is when regret appear, depression, anger and all these emotions that you should not be having, they appear.

So we need to live here and now and recognize what we do to our lives, those around us. This opens us to see things even those that which we don't want to. But there is no other way to live. Life is a pulsating, living process. We need to get plugged in. Not numbed out.