At a price

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it. 
~Albert Camus

Many brilliant people that have come before me have made the distinction that we learn by watching and that we gain experience and wisdom by living.  I won't try to be more profound than they are, or ride their coat tails by repeating/analyzing those quotes.

I mention this to say that people have always say to me things like "You're very wise for your age."  Well, for some things I'm completely useless.  Don't ask me about haute couture, the top 100 ways to keep your married sex life fresh, or to explain Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time entirely in pantomime.

But there are things I know, and those things came at a price

1.  Be thankful for every day you have with the people you love.  The trite thing to say would be "there are no guarantees of a tomorrow." And while that's true, my POV is that by being thankful, and by practicing grace while you're living those days, you're consciously building good memories for the days and moments you'll have to live without the person you love. ... and part of being thankful and graceful is being able to ....
 
2.  Let go of as much as you can.   Even if you've spent 23:59 hours of the day arguing, use the last second for loving and forgiving, or asking for love and forgiveness.  Anger is one of the most useless emotions. Sometimes we're so entrenched in our self-righteous anger that we forget to come up for air.  Trying to control situations, outcomes, people...it's all so exhausting. Sometimes that means you need to let go of situations, outcomes, and sometimes it even means you need to let go of people.  ... but of the people that remain, you need to be able to ...

3.  Ask for what you need.  That requires the self-awareness to know what you need, but it also requires the knowledge that you can't do everything yourself.  You can't fix everything yourself.  Sometimes you need to lean on friends and family.  It doesn't mean that you're weak, it means that you trust them to share the load of a heavy heart. ... and even if you ask for what you need, you need to remember that....

4.  Time doesn't heal all wounds.  Life is messy.  Life is hard.  Sometimes you just have to learn how to live the best life you can with the scars you have.  That's courageous--to choose to go on as best you know how.  But there's also courage in knowing that some things may never be the same, and adjusting for that. I'm not talking about managing expectations, but moreso talking about coming up with creative solutions and shifting your perspective. ... but even so....

5.  You can still seek out joy....  Life is messy. Life is hard. Find joy wherever and whenever possible.  Don't seek out joy as a distraction, but as a path.  Let light flood the darkness. ... and reflect joy.  Remember that though life is messy, and life is hard that you have the ability to be the light someone else needs. 

and more specifically to my situation, and to many of the emotional/binge eaters that follow me...

6.  Food doesn't fix anything.  Use your words.  Food fills the stomach.  That's it.  It doesn't mend the heart or ease the mind.  If you think food is duct tape for the soul, you're in for a wake up call one of these days. Instead, use your words to name the hurt, the fear, the joy, the sorrow, the needs, the wants.  Words succeed where food fails.  Whether you're keeping a blog, talking to a therapist, or just saying these things aloud to yourself in the bathroom mirror, you need to get emotions out of your body sometimes in the form of words.

19 years without mom.

2 comments

I find that letting go is a must. It's very hard to do but I can't change the past and spending time on it is wasted when I could focus on the great things I have in the present instead. Thanks for the great points.

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<3 Robby