Wanting “different”.
Recently I met a lovely lady who has reminded me of couple of experiences I have had in my life that both involved injuries that left me unable to do what I would normally. As I remembered these two incidents it occurred to me just how different these two experiences were for me and I started to wonder why.
In the first incident I had torn a ligament off my shoulder and was unable to use my left arm at all, couldn’t even fill a jug, I had no strength in my left hand or arm. Interestingly despite this it never stopped me from doing everything I would normally do in my day, like mucking out, cooking etc. I was in my mid-thirties and my daughter was a teenager, I worked full time etc. On reflection I realised I never once thought about not being able to do anything, I only thought “okay, how am I going to do this?”. At the time I don’t think I understood or appreciated what a wonderful thought this was. It was hard I had to really think outside the square, I actually appreciate just how creative I was, nothing was as easy as it normally was, and everything took so much longer, but I just accepted that for now this was the way it was, I knew I couldn’t change it, and I just accepted it without resistance.
The second incident I was 50 years old, and I broke my ribs. Again, I still kept going, but this time I really struggled, I wanted to cry all the time, I felt quite sorry for myself, I ruminated over not being able to ride, kept thinking about life before my accident and what I was missing. I just wanted my ribs to stop hurting, for things to go back to the way they were, for my ribs to heal etc. I judged myself for feeling sorry for myself when so many other people were experience tougher challenges than I. I would give myself examples of people who had permanent disabilities and needed a wheel chair. These thoughts just brought guilt and shame into the mix and in truth comparing our experience to anyone else’s experience is one of the most unhelpful things our brain offers, but that’s another Mind Food blog. Needles to say, I added a whole other layer of misery to my existing unhappiness about my circumstances.
This is the difference between accepting what cannot be changed and letting go of wanting it to be different and resisting what is happening. The difference between just feeling whatever disappointment or discomfort that is a normal part of the circumstances and not adding resistance.
I get it, when we don’t like how we are feeling, our experience of our circumstances, our first instinct is to try and change the circumstances or to feel differently, but the truth is the brain knows that to feel anything other than what you are feeling doesn’t make sense in the current set of circumstances. Sometimes we have to be willing to just feel miserable with our circumstances and move forward knowing that those feelings are coming along for the ride at the moment.
It helps to remind ourselves that this circumstance will change and we can use it to our gain or to our detriment, at the end of the day if we can’t change something perhaps it is time to stop trying to and to focus on what you can control, or change which is always our experience or attitude to it.
Stop fighting, we feel what we feel, we cannot continue thinking the same thoughts and expect to feel different, it doesn’t work that way. We can only look for an equally believable thought, that causes a different feeling, ideally a better feeling one, but sometimes it is just a better feeling version of shitty.
This is life for all of us, it is meant to come with highs, lows, and everything in between, because without the two sides of something we cannot appreciate either side separately.
As the saying goes, there is no light without darkness, we would not appreciate the sun if we never got rain.
