Crossroads...

We all end up there, at some point.  A place where we are offered yet another chance to behave the way we always have, or to do something different. I think I might have an easier time with this, if I could limit the something different to just one thing...but I can’t.  I end up thinking of so many different ways to behave...and then, I tend, to default back to what I know.  There are just too many options for new behavior, so I stick with the old despite its lack of efficacy...

I am coming around to the idea that perhaps it doesn’t matter which new behavior you choose, just don’t do the old one.  Even though it feels comfortably familiar and the safe bet, doing what you have always done is going to get you what you have always got.

And that isn’t always a bad thing...

I find myself, frequently, invigorated and almost proud of my past engagements with life and people and stuff.  I mean, it isn’t completely functional...but it is a pattern that has not let me down one time.  I mean, except that I tend to end up in the same place that I am not totally in love with...but maybe I am, maybe that is why I keep coming back to this same place over and over and over again.  I like it here.  Despite all my protestations to the contrary...I actually prefer what I am getting to what I am not getting.

It is an interesting thought really...maybe I do like where I keep ending up.  I mean, I keep choosing it.  And it has a certain je ne sais quoi. There is a comfortabilty in knowing that no matter what the crossroads, I tend to select a certain approach and then a whole set of countermeasures flow in and result in me, being able to continue doing what I have always done.  And maybe that isn’t something to be so much be resolved as accepted.

There is a lot to be said about change and development and growth.  There is a lot to be done and said.  However, there is also a time to accept this is who you are and while change is always a possibility, sometimes the crossroads traversed appear insurmountable.

For today, the crossroads do not seem insurmountable.  Just a little scary and inconvenient.  But nothing I can’t handle for fuck’s sake.  I mean, I quit drinking!  That is fucking huge.  With no relapse in over 30 years.  That is amazing, a decided turn towards health and living.  If I can do that, I am pretty sure I can do anything I set my mind to...with God’s help of course.

I am reminded again, sometimes God places us at the crossroads, other times we are there because we are dysfunctional and our circuitous behavior keeps landing us there.  Sometimes, the crossroads are not ours...we are just kinda hijacked there by others dysfunction and issue.

What I am finding I like to do at crossroads is rest.  To not get all amped up about it.  I can take my time, survey the landscape. Review the road traveled and the paths available for trodding that have, well, at this point either been relegated to the thought that the assent is too great, or not a worthy adventure.  I am sure I have gotten those judgments wrong repeatedly, but it has all worked out.  Always.

Crossroads provide us with an opportunity to change our present moment.  And our future living.  However, what I never knew about crossroads is that I can always double back.  I can abandon a path of inquiry, and just as easily, turn back if I find the road too treacherous or laden with hardship and pain.  I do not have to constantly trudge forward just because I crossed the road...I am the architect of my life (again, with God’s loving guidance) and I can create a new mother fucking crossroad any time I want.  And I think, at least this is what is landing for me now, is that it is all good.  No matter what I choose, the new behavior that is untried and untested, or reverting back to type and doing the same fucking thing again.  I am gonna get moved forward no matter what.  Sometimes the lessons we learn in this life come in very miniscule, discrete units and sometimes they come in grand sweeping change.  We might prefer one over the other, but that does not guarantee us that our preferences will be supported by universal will...

I keep in the forefront of my mind...that I am doing my best to grow and change and evolve.  And so are some other people.  But there are others still who have no desire to change, they are decidedly comfortable in their dysfunction and they are locked in.  I know, today, those are not my people.  I am always going to do the work because the payoff of living in my skin, happy, joyous even and fucking free is the best thing I have ever found.  No one is worth sacrificing that...no one.  Ever.

Grow I must, change I shall or wither I will.

Again, still...