Brave Heart, Peaceful Heart

Brave Heart, Peaceful Heart

I shuffled the deck this morning as usual, and the card that popped out was “Why am I peaceful?” An answer also popped out, which is a bit unusual for me, usually I get feelings for my responses. Anyway, the answer was, “Because I am courageous.”

Wow.

That answer surprised me. I wouldn’t think that courage and peace would go hand in hand, and then I started to think about it, cuz that’s what I do.

When I was a baby, I had moments of peace. As I got older, I sunk into anxiety, fear, worry, dread. It was easy to see the bleak. It was easy to see the grim. A smile requires that we go against gravity. Struggle is the starting point.

That day, when I declared I would be happy no matter what it took, was the beginning for me. I had a row to hoe that was going to be long. In the beginning, it was shallow and wobbly, that row. Now, it’s straight and deep, even and clean, to push the gardening metaphor.

When we decide we want a nice life, be it for our kids, our loved ones, or ourselves, we are choosing to grow up. On the one hand it seems easy to stay where we are. Let’s look at that.

There is a gigantic difference between comfortable and familiar. When we are in a situation that is gradually getting worse, it stays familiar. It gets so that disruptions in the middle of the night for dark drama are familiar. It gets so that horrible fights with cruel and cutting things said, even physical violence, are familiar. It gets so that anxiety is normal, grief is normal, constant worry is normal.

Because our normal feels so awful, we resort to outside stuff to feel better. Pretty much anything that changes how we feel can be addictive, and that’s often where we go. Alcohol, drugs,food, tobacco, sex, exercise, religion, shopping, physical pain, glamorizing, computer stuff, reading. It’s not the thing, it’s the way we use it; to escape that horrible familiar.

So then we decide that we want to make our lives better, we want things to be more comfortable, and you’d think that would be an easy choice, but leaving the familiar is challenging for us because we like familiar. I mean, the familiar is so familiar. Change means not-familiar, and that’s scary.

So for a lot of us, choosing nicer, comfier, more peaceful, is really scary because those ways of being are so unfamiliar.

Why would I choose peaceful? How would I choose easier? What makes me choose happy?

So, on the other hand, choosing peaceful will take some courage. It will take courage to walk away from the familiar, in whatever manner we decide to do that. I know that there are people who are so enlightened that they can accept an abusive situation and stay intact. I’m not so good at that. My other choices are change it, or leave it. There are millions of people who can help me. If I don’t fit with this one, try another. It took me eight tries to find the right therapist for me back in the day. It was so worth it.

How have I changed from cleaving to the familiar to choosing to illuminate my life?

(c) Pam Guthrie all rights reserved 02192014