What We Resist Persists
Life very rarely turns out the way we thought it would. When I started out on the path of life, I had very definite ideas about how things were going to go. The further I got down the trail, the more I realized that things were not turning out the way I had planned. My marriage collapsed, my children had some heartbreaking struggles and family estrangements were cropping up like weeds. These things were really hard.
We all experience difficulties and disappointments. We struggle with relaxing into our lives. It is our nature to thrash around and resist whatever is happening. We have an unrealistic idea of what our lives should really look like, and we hold to that picture no matter what. Therefore, when our lives don’t match that picture, we are thrown into a state of upheaval.
There are a lot of influences that go into shaping our ideas about how life should be. But regardless of how we came to this set of plans that we are trying to implement, chances are pretty good that things are not going quite like we thought they would.
When we find ourselves sitting with the pieces of a life that aren’t fitting together like they were supposed to, it’s then that we need to offer ourselves, and our lives, acceptance and love.
Usually our first instinct is to resist. We kick and scream at whatever is not going our way. The way it is, is not the way it’s supposed to be. Then we start bargaining. We negotiate. We manipulate. We force. We cry and kick and wail and fall into despair. This is not how it’s supposed to be!
Our best laid plans go awry and we refuse to accept it. Our children break our hearts, our siblings decide we are not worthy to be part of their lives anymore, our husband forgets our anniversary. The feelings that come with these disappointments are difficult, so we do whatever we can to avoid feeling them. We resist it all because it is hard.
We do this in dozens of ways — sometimes we turn on the TV and zone out, or we drink to take the edge off or we work all the time. We become angry and defensive. We fall into depression. These are all ways we have learned to keep ourselves from feeling what we are feeling.
What if instead we could learn to sit with what is not working and offer ourselves love in the midst of the struggle. What if we could just learn to be present for the entirety of our lives. What if we could see the pain as impermanent, like clouds in the sky, and know that we can relax without giving in to fear and avoidance.
This does not mean you don’t try to make things better. You should always work to make your life the best it can be. What it means is that you don’t get hung up on how it was supposed to be. When we do this we are looking at the past instead of the future. Clinging to our idea of what life was supposed to be is the perfect recipe for getting stuck. When we release our grip on what should have been, we begin to see the possibilities of what can be, instead. But we will not be successful at creating something better if we have not learned the lesson of first accepting what is.
Richard Rohr says “You cannot wait for things to be totally perfect to fall in love with them or you will never love anything.”
I am still learning to accept life as it really is. I still fall into the old habits of avoidance — finding ways to not feel my disappointments. But I am quicker to recognize when I am resisting. Then I stop. I allow myself to feel my heartache and despair. I recognize that these are just emotions and they won’t kill me. I put my hand over my heart and offer myself love and compassion in the midst of the pain and chaos, the way it is.
When I can sit with the pain without resisting, I release my need to use unskillful means to keep from feeling it. Then I am better able to love my life as it is and move forward to a place where I can create something better.
Beth Bruno lives by the mantra “If not now, when?” She is a writer trying to make sense of the world as she sees it. She works as a horticultural therapist with dementia patients. She spends her free time gardening, camping and reading. She lives in South Carolina with her husband, 6 chickens and 2 cats.
What We Resist Persists
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