Fear has been the one emotion I completely understand. Fear was the vessel that all thoughts ran through in my mind. Fear was the tool that snapped my mind closed when I faced It. Fear was the voice of anger screaming in my face, the smell of alcohol making me tremble, the lines in my father’s face forming the look that we all recognized as the time for the other shoe to drop. It always did, because we always expected it to. Conditioned by the familiarity of the steps; always taking us to the same ending. We never learned that we only had to change how we thought about; what we expected to see change. I have been coming up on this for two years now and I finally faced it today. When a person yells in my face, I get to “choose not to accept” that behavior and I can do that by walking away, not enabling the bad behavior by accepting it. I am not the small child whose father taught her to live in fear; I am a strong healthy minded mature woman making her own choices about what takes place in her life. I am the adult that took the words my father said to me with malice, “It’s all in your head,” to heart, and realized that he had given me an amazing gift by telling me that. When a person treats me as poorly as that man did today, I know it has nothing to do with me. His mind controls his behavior, as mine controls my behavior. I choose to not respond or accept behavior like that ever again. I am saddened when I think that my strength makes others feel weak and weakness makes then angry; but it is not acceptable behavior so I will not. “It is “really” not my business what others think of me.”
">A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61)">A New Earth: awakening to Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club section 61)As my purpose was unfolding today, I found myself having many of those private conversations we have with ourselves when we think no one is listening. The ones we all have, I know I am not alone in that. I often joke to my friends that my neighbors must think I’m off my trolley when they know I live alone and I am talking aloud, vehemently trying to make my point, to the invisible me. If I have to keep rejecting people in my life based on bad behavior I will probably find myself having more conversations with the invisible me. I joked with my friend today and told her I would wave from my back yard, as I thought how alone I might have to be. Living in a neighborhood is not at all, as Mister Rogers said it would be. He said we would all be friends, however, where is he when I need him? Maybe I should contact him through one of the dimensions I know exists around me now. Maybe when I am in a guided meditation, quantum leaping to the top of a giant daisy, I will find him and finally ask to explain how he could be so cheerful in that neighborhood everyday. “It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood. Won’t you be my friend?” I am making a joke of all of this because I actually find it humorous that I saw so clearly today, what I wish I had seen so many years ago. Years before raising my own children, years before my divorces, my bad relationships, and my bad working relationships with men that rejected me in management positions over them. Men that because of their small minded thinking, and lack of self esteem, manipulated and choreographed my demise from management positions, by convincing other men that I was just another emotional woman, and had no right to be in a position of power over them. Moreover, here I was thinking that the world has changed and men and women all realize that we are all equal. Sorry, I had to stop there for a moment to stop laughing at myself. Equal, in what universe? Isn’t it time to open our eyes and minds and really remember that “there is no new thing under the sun?”
The purpose that I discovered today has nothing to do with my treatment by others. I am only observing how my day went, despite the fact that I found myself, the confidence, and the ability to go after the one thing I know was meant be. I have begun to create the blueprint for the program that I know will help others like me, which come from dysfunction mentally or physically, to heal them and re-create their lives. Free themselves from the obstacles that stand in their way, and teach others to do the same. I have discovered the “positive catch-22.” The “give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach him to fish and he will eat forever.” Help another find their passion, and despite obstacles, disabilities, and the disservice of others; find their way to the life they desire. Get up to a job everyday that they love. A job that is truly them, the real them, the person they were meant to be. More to come….
