I have posted several times recently on the issue of not continuing to allow oneself to be a victim or trapped by one’s past and the need to take affirmative steps to make changes in one’s outlook and mind set to accomplish this goal, be it through therapy or other spiritual means. With this background, I came across a post on a friend’s blog about two people in his life that perfectly illustrated the choices we all are confronted with in deciding which path we choose to follow (I have modified the language slightly):
“He is someone who has traveled a pretty harsh road, but he is so determined to not let his past and not let those experiences impact negatively on his present and future. I have no doubt that it’s a difficult path and I can even see the struggles at times in his eye’s. However he keeps powering ahead. He is so willing to put in the hard work. That’s a quality I admire in people.
It’s interesting because in contrast, I see another friend who refuses to deal with the difficult situation before her and just dwells on the past. Even though to fix things would be difficult, if the effort was put into the endeavor, she would come out happier and healthier. I hope she decides to take this path at some point because she truly deserves to be happy.”
I realize that I myself have not always put the needed effort into escaping the wounds and old paradigms of my past - it is ever so easy to wallow in being a victim – but overall I believe I have made significant progress in not allowing this baggage to continue to control my present and future. Has it been an easy process? Most certainly it has not. Has it been worth the effort? Most definitely.
3 comments:
My favorite are the people who spend so much time insisting they aren't victims but survivors that they don't bother to do the work, just live in their own kind of denial. It's sad and frustrating to watch.
Keep up your good work, Michael!
It's nice to know that sometimes a post I write inspires a thought in someone else. I appreciate it.
The psychoanalytic paradigm has always been behaviorist at core, searching for repressed conflicts in the unconscious to "identify" or "blame" as the "reason for." The same methodology permeates many social sciences. But if that model is correct, why does only one of six siblings become gay, only one becomes financially and academically successful, one ends up on skid row, etc?
The Source is Always in Ourselves. We cannot control the ebbs and tides of life, but we do control how we choose to face, integrate, and handle them -- anew every day of every hour of every minute. It's only when we "fixate" that our pliability breaks and we crack. The past, therefore, is past, the future is yet to be, so that leaves only "now" in which to live vitally and vibrantly.
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