There are so many things in life that we can’t control – the luck of when and where we’re born, and to whom, for instance. In life, there will be happy surprises and tragic accidents; transcendent moments and unexpected betrayals; passion and loss. That’s just how life works, in all its great beauty, heights and depths. Some stuff you get to decide – some you don’t.
One thing is certain – you’ll never know what might have been if you hadn’t been born you.
Onism – n. “the frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time, which is like standing in front of the departures screen at an airport, flickering over with strange place names like other people’s passwords, each representing one more thing you’ll never get to see before you die-and all because, as the arrow on the map helpfully points out, you are here.”
We are born narcissists, and that’s what knocks us back when key moments occur without warning. We live under the illusion that we are in control of our lives; fate knows better. Even the most meticulously planned course of events can take a left turn, and topple us into joy or despair, forcing our emotions to run the gamut. The world keeps turning, the pieces of the planet’s puzzle drop into place, and that’s just the way it is. No choice but to deal with what we’ve encountered, but much choice in how we handle our feelings.
What gets strewn along your path as you navigate the years may surprise you. Spoiler alert … it’s not all gonna be roses. Roses need manure to flourish, so expect a lot of horse shit on that path.
Everything’s relative. Perception is reality. You may think your life is horrible, but to someone with even less of what they need, you probably look like you’ve got it made. What we choose to value says a great deal about character. If your house was on fire, what would you choose to save? What makes you get up in the morning and begin another day? Depending on how you see your life, you can feel gratitude for what you have, or feel chronically and spitefully short changed.
Lachesism: “Longing for the clarity of disaster, the desire for revelation. “
There will always be tides in life, times when you feel alone, and wonder if the blackness around you is all there really is. You won’t know if you can take any more, and you’ll wonder why you should bother to even try. But the truth is, when life is tough, you can cave, or you can triumph. You can struggle on alone, or you can reach out to accept help, and to offer others help. Your choice.
We can overcome our infantile narcissism, but it takes insight. To ‘sonder,’ means to realize that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. Yes, you are the star of your own inner movie, but everyone else is also living their own epic. And what you do impacts upon everyone around you, whether they play a major or minor role in your blockbuster.
Once you’ve understood that all whom you encounter have as much weight and importance as you do in the universe, it takes a concerted effort to dismiss how your own behaviour changes their realities. The way you approach your emotions will have consequence. Your choice to be optimistic or pessimistic, to be altruistic or self-centered, will color the worlds of those around you, and by extension, everyone those people interact with, and so on, ad infinitum.
It’s ironic; to be truly aware of one’s own importance in the universe is to understand that everyone else is just as important.
Scary, eh? Most of us never realize the full magnitude of our actions, and unfortunately, some who do dream of using those very repercussions to achieve dominance. Again … a choice.
We’ve all known people who have captured our attention through their strong personalities. We call some ‘Suzy Sunshines,’ and others ‘Debi Downers.’ It has little to do with how they appear on the surface, though years of channelling strong emotion and inner convictions will eventually shape our physical forms.
Some intuitively understand the power of personality. We call those people celebrities, or movie stars, or politicians.
But for most of us, it’s the little ways we operate that matter. It’s easy to urge others to join in celebration, but much harder to open oneself to mourning. And yet both of these circumstances will alter the people around you, however subtly.
Kenopsia, n. “the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that’s usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet—a school hallway in the evening, an unlit office on a weekend, vacant fairgrounds—an emotional afterimage that makes it seem not just empty but hyper-empty, with a total population in the negative, who are so conspicuously absent they glow like neon signs.”
It’s important to work through that emotional gamut of joy or grief; to feel is to heal. Denial, anger, despair, rage, numbness, isolation, desperation – we need to know how they feel to know when the hurting stops. But we also have to know when to stop allowing these emotions to control us, and by extension, those around us who love us, but who have psyches of their own to protect.
Getting outside our own immediate impulses may be difficult, but it’s also a chance to understand the difference between the savage and the civilized mind. Our natural inclinations lean to a need for comfort and the attainment of our own immediate gratification of physical needs; civilization imposes the strictures necessary for all within a society to live peaceably. Civilization involves rising above the knee jerking of base impulses to a sober rethinking of how our primal reactions of rage or revenge to events beyond our control will eventually destroy the fabric that holds each society together.
When we hurt, when we’re tired, it’s so very hard to work towards a nobler self. We ask ourselves is it worth it? Is it even possible to take the high road? Or is it already too late?
… you can choose.
first published Dec 6/2015: bobsegarini.wordpress.com/2015/12/06/roxanne-tellier-you-can-choose/
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