Yes, Taylor Swift again. She’s like that wise old man at the top of the mountain dispensing the meaning of life. Only with more bouncy curls.
I’ve been reading the archives here and the patterns are frustrating. Looking back, I thought the problem was circumstance, so I jumped off the speeding train. Only the lack of time, the crushing weight, the sinking realization I had to do everything all of the time, it all followed right behind me. Then, I thought maybe the problem was my response to circumstance, so I worked hard to change my reactions. And again. And yet. These things help, but now I wonder if what I really need to learn to do is change my perception. Appreciate the good things.
It’s tricky. In some ways, that’s what got me into the worst of it all — I was so focused on pleasing everyone else but me that I thought what I wanted didn’t matter. I thought the answer was to be happy where I was, when where I was would never make me happy.
Our fears and hopes and reactions are often based on past experiences, not what’s in front of us now. Sometimes, that serves us very well. Other times, not at all. How can we know which time is which?
When I escaped to the desert, one of the counselors there said I had trouble with discernment. I don’t trust anything, don’t count on anything, because when I have, I’ve been let down. She said it wasn’t that nothing can be trusted, but that I had been trusting the wrong things, the wrong people. Maybe.
It always seems like all or nothing, but it never is. It’s just what comes next.