Every moment truly counts but not for the reason you’ve been told.
Miserable Alarm
All this month, love has been our target. We’ve discussed self-love, loving a new life, the beauty of material love and loving abundantly. But sometimes love is miserable. These are still growth turns but we don’t like them. Some of these alarms go off in adulthood even though they are based on our childhood. There may not be accessible memories, but that miserable feeling still crops up around certain family members, specific places and distinct circumstances. Something is off. It smells bad to our energy. Our hearts beat strangely. We can’t quite put our fingers on it, but it doesn’t feel like the love we are trying to build. It feels like a betrayal of our love. It reappears during life in grief, illness, and even times that just feel unsatisfied. Miserable love may have prompted you to follow along during this year of transformation to finally cut loose some old baggage. But hold onto it for just one more peek.
Misery loves Company
When you think about it, there is an upside to feeling down. Obviously, one way to look at these times is to appreciate the good times. That gets old pretty fast. Even bad times must have some nuance. The truth is that having a lousy day, or week or month or crazy surprise event enter your life lets you experience another side of you. The miracle of you is the ability to have emotional flexibility factory-installed and ready anytime. In coaching, I advise as much sitting with so-called negative emotions as the positive ones. The goody-two-shoes ones are fun, but humans are wired for walking barefoot in the mud also. The trick is not to be dominated by either. Real gratefulness for all of life includes a sincere willingness to have it all. That sounds like something from a commercial. But it is true. Humans deserve and want it all. We just want to control the timing and that isn’t always possible. The need to control is a way to shout out when we are all armor-suited up to wage war on whatever demon is nearing. But humans are more like sun-bathers on the beach who can’t see the tsunami coming.
Invitation to Anticipation
Since the first caves full of humans, there have been some who wanted to visit the others to see what they were doing. It may have been based on interest in improving or it could have been old-fashioned nosiness. Either way, the ones who wanted the visit over with quickly endured the time with just their feelings for company. There is always time for complaining about the neighbors after they leave. Nowadays, when we know we have to show familial love by hanging around others, we can anticipate the way we will feel and understand that this will pass. The domination of emotions becomes the path to understanding differences or even allows for practicing honoring feelings. It doesn’t have to leave a dark mark. The result is the absence of residual downtime. Grief has a timeline akin to a roller coaster. Illness also. But both are methods to feel love. Grieving is entangled in loving feelings and thoughts. Illness opens the door to crucial understanding of the complexity of our own physics. Bad times don’t last forever. Eventually, a window opens and the sunshine returns even with clouds to soften it. This is the guarantee of our natural world.
Point to Where it Hurts
There is a reason for pain. It helps us to identify the part that hurts. Hearts do break and they hurt also. Using discontent as a roadmap points the way to get over discomfort. Counter-intuitively, humans are wired to perceive misery to get better. That should be a great big clue if you have felt disenchanted with life. The signs are all there. You need to stare at what makes you miserable, hold it close and let it know that you appreciate it showing up and help it understand that it has done its duty. Tend to it and let it go. Boredom is a misery that humans are well acquainted with. Modern day technology has reduced the time that we can stand it by supplying new ways to avoid it. For all those cries of how busy we are, humans have a lot less tolerance for being miserably bored and lonely. We might see all that busyness as the antidote. And it isn’t. The remedy is digging around in the boredom for what you are missing. Strangely, you may really need to sit miserably bored to get the rest from thinking. You may not have thought of more boredom as the medicine. Consider that first next time you want to scroll, stream or click your way to a new thought. You might be shocked when you realize how delightful it really is to let your boring self just sit quietly. Close your eyes and breathe.
Examine your heart: Do you love your miserable self? Can you love those miserable humans around you? What do you really want to feel when you feel bored?
