Lessons from Life

Today one of my dearest friends got laid off, and I feel devastated.  I’m worried about her.  She is one of the most talented, hardworking people I know… she wasn’t let go for any other reason then she is just a victim of downsizing.  And I can’t help but be staggered at the unfairness of it all.  I can’t help but see it as another horrible thing happening to a good person that deserves better.

So I was feeling unnerved and decided to sit down with an older woman I work with.  She is a little hippy-ish, but always very positive.  When I told her how I was feeling, she didn’t judge me, but she said something that did sorta stagger me.  It was…

“Look at it this way.  So she is let go today – then she ends up getting an amazing job some where else that really enriches her life – you would want that for her RIGHT?  Well that’s what its all about right now – waiting to see what happens.  Its a journey my dear, one that we have no control over.  Yeah, its a major inconvenience at first – worry about paying some bills and such, but after that its an adventure.  Where she goes from here – well she has a new exciting path to explore!”

I sat there speechless.  All I could think was how could anyone just believe that things will work out for the best so passionately?  Here I am, feeling like this horrible thing just happened… that life is unfair and cruel, and she is actually excited for my friend because of the adventure she is about to have.  Then another thought hit me.  Imagine if I had actually been brought up to believe that.  What if this woman had been my mother, and I grew up surrounded with beliefs like that one.  What kind of person would I be?  How would my view of life be different?

You see, I was raised to believe that life is out to get you.  That no matter how good a person you are, or how hard you try, life is going screw you over.  I was taught life wasn’t fair.  I was taught good people get punished while undeserving people get rewarded.  Both my parents lived an breathed those beliefs.  If something bad happened, well of course it did.  Bad things always happen to good people.  And if something good happened, it was temporary, because eventually a cruel and unfair life would take it away.  My parents never took responsibility for anything that happened to them.  They were just helpless victims of the thing called life.

Now, I never really bought into this on a rational, intellectual level.  I believe life is what we make of it.  No it’s not easy, and it downright sucks sometimes, but it can be glorious too.  And I also believe if we try hard enough, we can do amazing things with our lives.  But that’s my “rational mind” talking.  My emotional mind still clings to the idea that life isn’t fair… that the bad things that happen to me are a punishment of some kind, and that something like getting let go is a source of dread and sorrow, not an adventure to be celebrated.  No matter how much I know or what I now believe, those shadows of the past… those lessons i learned as a child still loom over me and effect the way I see life itself.

The good news is I can learn a new way of thinking.  I can retrain my thoughts to be more positive.  I can refocus my beliefs to see life as something to enjoy instead of something to dread.  And it’s going to be amazingly hard… and take years to undo the lessons I learned about life.  After all, those lessons took my entire life to learn… its gonna take a while to unlearn them and make room for other beliefs.

For now, I’m going to hold onto something else that wise friend shared with me today.  That life is a constant journey filled with exciting new things to explore and all we have to be willing to do is is put ourselves in places of beauty, joy, fun… and ENJOY!!!

~ by Enygma on August 13, 2008.