It
is interesting reading some of the spiritual posts which go up and I
like many of them but equally, sometimes they just sound trite and
unrealistic.
One suggests that we should respect ourselves
enough to walk away from that which does not serve us, does not help us
grow and does not make us happy. The reality is that if we did we would
spend our whole lives walking away.
Surely if one could walk away from anything then
we would but often we cannot and it has nothing to do with a lack of
respect - it is just the way it is! We can have difficult situations
with our children for example and we may find it impossible to believe
it serves us, let alone grows us, feeling crushed as one can and it
certainly does not make us happy but we would never walk away.... and
should never walk away.
Equally with parents who are deserving
of our honouring no matter how hard it might be to remain in a
relationship; or our siblings whom we have chosen to be with in this
life; or our close friends whom we have known for many years and who,
because of what is going on in their lives, no longer 'serve' us, although my question is, who
says they should ?
And what does it mean to say that someone or something 'grows us' that we can define as growth anyway? How would we know what is growing us and what is not given that often it is only when we look back over many years that we can see that difficult situations were in fact just what we needed and the best thing for us? The difficult
people and situations are our greatest teachers so says another spiritual maxim.
And then there is the illusion of what makes us happy, when often, what makes us happy or makes us feel happy or think we are happy is the worst thing for us. Ask anyone who is addicted to drugs, drink, sex, work, exercise, food.....
If
we are in an abusive relationship there is good reason to walk away but
generally such relationships are long lasting and the decision to walk
away comes very late in the piece. One could argue that if a woman does
not walk away the first time her partner is physically violent toward
her then she is accepting the situation and the problem is as much hers
as his. Obviously it is not always easy to walk away and that is also
the point. There are many things which don't 'serve' us, which are
painful, which make us desperately unhappy and we feel we cannot walk
away just yet, perhaps never. If we do walk away from an abusive
relationship for instance then we still need to remember we cannot walk
away from the part of us which got us there in the first place and kept
us there; in other words we have to do the painful work or we will just
put ourselves in the same situation again.
We may not always get what we want but we always get what we need.
Sometimes we have no way of knowing what serves us until many years
later; sometimes what grows us the most is pain and courage and
suffering; sometimes what makes us happy is the most destructive
thing.... ask any drug addict ..... life is what it is and sometimes we
cannot walk away and if we do, life just presents us with the same
lesson in different form.
If you run from your demons they will follow; turn and face them and they dissolve.
No comments:
Post a Comment