I am still stuck on Rumi. This quote in particular:
I know you are tired, but come, this is the way...
Um, how the hell did he know that I would feel this way literally hundreds of years ago?
I am tired. But also invigorated. I seem to vacillate between the two. Completely exhausted from all the thinking my brain seems to produce and invigorated by each new idea that lands there.
I feel completely exhausted by my striving to make connection with others but seem unable to give up the quest. I keep searching for the meaning of life and am coming to believe that it is in the seeking...that is the meaning. To continually and repeatedly seek to improve the conditions of your life, so that you can help others with theirs. The goal cannot just be to get a better life for yourself...that would tend to lack meaning and purpose. Not to mention being incredibly self centered.
All my life, I have let desire run rampant in my life, altering truths that were capable of being seen but because those truths did not align with what I desired, a stubborn refusal to admit and own the truth would edge out reason, logic and decency. I would move to a lower vibrational level because for some misguided reason, I thought that I would find what I was looking for there. Nope. Not ever was I looking for a painful lesson but that is what usually awaited me.
I am there again. Faced with wanting something really badly and knowing that it is not for me. Seeing all the evidence of it not being for me but still allowing this story to run in the background that tells me that there is this tiny chance. And there is. But the tiny chance isn’t that I will be supremely happy and connected and loved. It is the tiny chance that I will allow myself to devolve into a person that I do not like, respect or love. I used to cut these types of deals willy nilly. In the immortal words of Shawn Colvin, “you don’t have to drag me down, I descend.” And I am not talking from the heavens, nope pretty much from a boots on ground, standing position to perhaps the floor. It wasn’t how far I would allow myself to go, just that I chose the downward spiral over ascension every single time. Sigh.
So at 50, I am tired but I do know that this is still the way. I have to stand here, desire to descend directively assertive in my life, and watch it spin. But instead of being caught in the tornadoic pull, I can remain in the center of the funnel and just watch myself as it all swirls around me. Praying that this time, as I move closer to the edge of safety, that it will be different.
Perhaps it is the wisdom that comes with age, perhaps it is sheer exhaustion, perhaps I am finally growing up. Whatever the reason, there is no story I can tell myself about this situation that does not end with me becoming someone I do not like. I cannot continue to do this. I won’t. I have come to love myself and my life too much to allow myself to descend into madness and despair over something that is not meant for me. I have done that enough to know that nothing worthwhile ever comes from the loss of adherence to own’s moral fiber except painful lessons where the ego dupes you into thinking that THIS time it will be different. Today I will take contrary action for my own benefit. I will release that which is not meant for me and let it go. I will feel any related pain and bless the whole fucked up situation away from me.
I am grateful that I can do this without anger or blame. Life is complicated. Life is often challenging. But never, have I ever, not known what to do...
As dear Cheryl says:
Don’t do what you know on a gut level to be the wrong thing to do. Don’t stay when you know you should go or go when you know you should stay. Don’t fight when you should hold steady or hold steady when you should fight. Don’t focus on the short-term fun instead of the long-term fallout. It’s hard to know what to do when you have a conflicting set of emotions and desires, but it’s not as hard as we pretend it is. Saying it is hard is ultimately a justification to do whatever seems like the easiest thing to do - have the affair, stay at that horrible job, end a friendship over a slight, keep tolerating someone who treats you terribly. There isn’t a single dumbass thing I’ve done in my adult life that I didn’t know was a dumbass thing to do while I was doing it. Even when I justified it to myself, the truest part of me knew I was doing the wrong thing.
Yep. Totally there. The truest part of me knows that I want to do the wrong thing. But that same part of me knows, I can’t. Not going to happen. And that will feel better the more distance I put between myself and the bad decision I want to make.
Youth affords us the ability to allow ourselves to be duped by our own internal conflict. The wisdom that comes with age, dogs us and keeps us more honest about what we are doing and why. I could spend a lot more time here wishing for things to be different, but I lack sufficient energy to make myself really believe it. Instead the truth looms large over every thought, feeling and deed. I am tired, dear Rumi, but I know this is the way. The way that I move closer to my authentic self...by leaving those things and people not meant for me behind...
