Changing habits March 13, 2008
Posted by Liz Mead in : Coming Back , trackback
Right at this very moment two of my girlfriends are changing.
One is head over heels in love and planning to get married in her garden. And the other has just resigned, rented out her home, and has booked a flight to Kathmandu to work on a community project.
It’s not the first time either of them has done such a thing.
What is it about our lives? We repeat things until we get it right, or hope to get it right, or get it almost right. In any event, who says what’s right except our own in-built moral compass. What interests me is that we keep repeating things.
Just this morning I was talking with friends about this process. How do we stay true to our path? How do we change the direction of that path if it reaches a dead end? And will we know the dead end when it appears? And what about those forks that lead you in circles back on the same path. The forks I call habit.
I’m aware that when we change one part of a puzzle other parts of the puzzle adjust, sometimes with resistance and other times to strengthen the new configuration.
Right now I am changing the way I live and work. I change the way I live in my house by decorating and moving things around. I change the way I work by linking to new media that enables me to operate from home in a far more global way than ever before. All fine because it’s just about me. Where it gets tricky is when other people come into the equation.
This darling soon-to-be-wed friend has had to change arrangements for the overseas trip we were going to take together. The sudden change raised a question of paying more money or losing money to adjust for that change.
My first reaction to the travel change was a default reaction to rescue the situation, to ensure someone else was made happy. To pick up the extra cost so she could be happy. But it didn’t sit right. Something tweaked in this newly-renovated-self. Something made me put my needs out there.
And here’s where the stress arose. If I told her what I wanted and needed, would this friend be angry? Would my needs outweigh hers? Would I lose her as a friend? Whose fault was it anyway? Why rock the boat!?
No need to worry, of course. Once all the information was laid on the table and because she’s a friend, her reaction was of course perfect acquiescence and love. I needn’t have worried.
But I did. Not that I worried for nothing. Rather I worried just enough for the lesson to be remembered well, and the dead-end behaviour to stop.
So I dare say we will keep doing the same things again and again. We’ll repeat the same lesson many times before we’re through. It’s how we do it, each time it comes up, that make the difference, not getting it right.
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Dear Lizzie
Finding and reading your blog today has provided me with so much joy. Please continue to explore and to question and be faithful to yourself.
I believe in the Ying and Yang of life. Often the deeper the trouble the greater the need to search and strive for the positive, and how wonderful and refreshing that feels after the abyss!
Yes we all repeat ourselves. And I’m finding that I’m encountering many of the same people again as the circles turn, often after many years. But I’m approaching both the experiences and these people in a very different way, and it all feels very positive.
When these ‘returns’ feel so right, I can but only trust in them and invest my most honest of emotions. If the future reality doesn’t work out entirely as expected perhaps I’ll feel deflated but never sorry. And I seem to be receiving the message that all care should be taken with everyone we come into contact with. So, off to the high mountains I go, again, and I send love to you and best wishes for your voyage.
Lizzie,
Trish Burt sent me your link and said I was to read your Blog after a lunch discussion we had to-day.
It all makes so much sense and it could also make a great book as it is what we think and talk about but do not write down. It is all about what to do and the timing and the ‘go to’ urge. Which is something we must not loose. I met a great woman Architect on the train from Vancouver to Toronto 2006 and we are still in touch. Another I met in Spain she lives in New York I had a phone call from her on Tuesday night wanting me to visit her on my way home this year. A Canadian woman I met in Sicily asked me to visit her in Toronto I did and we organised a trip to Montreal, Quebec and Niagera Lakes and Falls. Things happen when you least expect it. Reading your blog reminded me of the many great places I have been and the people I have met along the way.
I am also a Libran but much older than you. I travel each year Trish and I were in Beijing last year, I went on to Shanghai I found it facinating.