At what point is it enough? When is it your turn?
These are great questions to ask. In fact, I ask this about us all the time.
When is it our turn?
See, I want to dance. I want to have the times of our life.
I want to be the reason why people look with envy.
Sure, I do.
I want my turn in the sun. And I want my moments in the shade as well. I want to be the one who passes beyond the red, velvet ropes and is welcomed to the events of this day’s life, as if to be live and on stage.
I want my place in the circle and yes, I want my little piece of the pie which is not asking for too much. But still, I want to find my corner on this earth and stake my claim to what’s mine.
Of course, I do.
But, before I find this, I must define the roadblocks ahead of me.
I have to look to turn my obstacles into opportunities.
I can’t look back anymore or pick through my past with a fine-toothed comb.
I have to ask myself –
When is the past in the past?
When or where do we draw the line and say that’s enough?
I have entitled this journal, If That Were True.
I have been saying this line in most of my entries for a reason. The reason is more than the title itself and more than some catchy idea to get you to read my thoughts. No.
There’s more to it than that.
I started this journal with the intention to script and to define an alternate way so that we can rest for a while.
So that our mind can stop the arguments that take place in our head.
This is to alleviate the pressure –
I started this journal to find peace within myself because, like the rest of the world, I know what it means to live with high anxiety.
I know what it’s like to live with the “doom and gloom” ideas or to wait for the tragedies or the next worst thing to go wrong.
But when is this enough?
When can the guilt stop?
When can the shame go away?
Better yet, when will we stop lurking in the halls of our regrets?
When will we come to our senses and say hey, this is all bullshit? When will we stop trying to re-litigate the past?
Unchangeable means unchangeable and unfixable means the more we try, the worse we feel.
It has come to my attention that the past is the past. While I might have some unresolved tensions or my outcomes might not have gone as planned – and yes, there has been heartache and heartbreak, or, even though some of my past results led me to some present and future pains, at some point, we have to allow ourselves the right to find forgiveness.
The personal persecution has to end.
At some point, we have to settle with ourselves.
Otherwise, how can we find peace? How could we possibly find our sustainable balance?
I ask these things because at what point do we become the priority and say “no more!”
I have talked about the five fingers of rejective thinking before.
These are blame, shame, guilt, fault and regret. These are peace killers. These are the fingers that close and make a fist which is what we use when we beat ourselves up.
These are the enemies that disrupt our system with ideas of doubt and hopelessness.
But at what point do we stop this.
When do we choose acceptance?
When do we move on?
At what point do we accept what took place and rather than argue this or try to “fix it,” at what point do we realize that we have to stop the mental committees?
We have to stop the persecution. We have to adapt to “what is” and look forward to what could be . . .
We have to make the skin we’re in become the skin we want.
Right?
I cannot stop the momentum of someone else’s life. I cannot change your course or direction the same as you cannot change mine.
At some point, we have to grow tired of running into the same walls or banging our heads in the same places.
We have to realize that in order to change, then changes have to take place.
We have to do something. We have to try.
Move.
Go left or go right because doing the same thing will only bring more of the same – and if we are looking for peace, then we have to understand what peace looks like.
And that’s a great question too.
I wonder if anyone knows the answer to this.
I have ideas of what peace looks like from a physical perspective. It’s more than finding a moment of Zen. I think peace is more than sitting beneath a palm tree or facing the sunrise and watching the sky come to life.
I think this is peaceful. I think a view like this is beautiful and, of course, these things are helpful.
But what does peace really look like?
Perhaps peace is the freedom that takes place when we choose to detach from the unneeded dramas or the worries that take place throughout the day.
I suppose peace would be the absence of anxious thinking or the freedom from the pressures of uncontrollable things.
Or maybe peace can be defined by a simple decision, which means we make a choice and we stick to it – and I say this confidently because yes, I am a person who lived in a state of indecision. I lived there for a very long time.
This has allowed me to understand that I don’t ever want to be held up or stuck or stagnant.
I don’t ever want to live this way again.
In the realm of all possibilities, my best way of finding and understanding peace would mean the following:
I have to be true to myself.
This means that I would have to be true to my heart as well. I would have to be honest first – and if I’m being honest, this means I would have to follow my truths instead of my fears or the assumptions which lead me astray.
I think freedom means to be free of unnecessary assumptions.
This means that we are free from our worries or doubt.
I think freedom happens when we are not worried about outside influences which is not to say freedom is altogether selfish; however, there is a freedom can be achieved when we realize what is and what is not within our control.
How many times have you said to yourself, “I can’t live like this much longer?
How many times have you wished you had the courage to make a change yet you paused or you stalled? As you watched your dreams take a different direction, in the end, how many times have you watched the window of opportunity close because of you and your indecision?
I can say that yes, this was me.
I can say absolutely. Yes.
I’ve done this and I have paid the price for this as well.
Trust me, the expense was severe.
However, and at some point, there comes a time when enough is enough.
We can stop paying into mistakes that are either long gone or far behind us.
At some point, we can decide to look towards the future and do something like live our life without regarding the past or worrying about other people, places or things.
I agree that life can be expensive.
But at some point, I think that maybe you and I have paid enough.
And now . . .
Now sounds like a good time to get some return on our investment.
Now is the time for life to pay us back –
So, we can live.
The Written Addiction 