I started reading the book my boss let me borrow. So far it's been a very pleasant reminder to the lessons I've learned over the past two years. The lessens I've learned but continue to forget. Life isn't about how you feel once you achieve your goals or integrate your trauma or find the right job. Living isn't found in the big, once in a lifetime moments. It's truly found in you daily life. In the minutia of the details. The author quotes Anne Dilliard: "How you spend your day is how you spend your life."
So many of us, including myself, spend our lives distracting ourselves from our pain rather than feeling it. We self-medicate with drugs, alcohol, food, television, sex, the internet. Many of us self medicate with work. When people hear the words, "self-medicate" they think of alcoholics and addictions but that isn't always the case. What you use doesn't have to be to the point where one my classify it as an addiction. It just has to serve a purpose to allow you to numb out. For me, that's watching television. I've done it since I was a little kid. My sick days were spent lying on the couch in front of the t.v. for hours on end falling into and waking out of sleep.
While I was in high school and college, I had plenty of other distractions that kept me busy. However, when things got bad like when I failed my initial student teaching, I turned to what I always turned to in times of pain. The television came on and the flickering lights from the screen would entrance me, the world around me would evaporate, and it would be about other people's problems. During that time, it watched medical shows, listen to people's stories from inside the Emergency Room. Recently, to cope with the pain of the trauma, I turned on the television and vanished into stories far worse than mine. Stories of people being tortured, murdered, vanishing from the world without a trace.
Their tears, the pain of their families, it was an intoxicating cocktail that rarely failed to do it's job. Recently, I've watched less but only because I've worked more hours. I'm just replacing it with another distraction. The weight I lost before the wedding I've gained back so clearly food is also a wonderful contributor. Sure the pain has lessened and I've faced more than I would have ever admitted existed five years ago but there is still a lot more to face. It's about being in the moment. Right now, between the television, the books, the work, and these 27 goals I've placed before myself I find that I am losing sight of what is happening right now.
Meditation is a goal. Meditation is about being in the present. In the silence, alone with ones thoughts. It's about acknowledging what arises during that time and saying hello to it. It's about greeting the pain, the unpleasant memories, the anxieties, the doubt, the anger with open arms. I believe that the author makes a valid point when she says that we spend too much time fighting ourselves, creating problems for ourselves to cover the ones we don't want to deal with. This is not a book written for victims of trauma or abuse. It's written for regular people who turn toward something they once found comforting to hide.
It's not easy to face our experiences. I know that first hand but I also know that constantly avoiding those feelings leads to an inevitable lessening of the living that one does each day. You can't just avoid the pain without also avoiding the pleasant feelings as well. Everything becomes diminished. Many times, if one does feel that pleasant feeling for a moment, guilt or fear immediately follows. We've, at least I've, allowed myself to become so conditioned by the pain that I feel like I don't deserve the pleasure. That's not true. I learned that a while ago but it's amazing how often one need to be reminded of such things.
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