The Enigmatic Static

Of sticky ball mind.

It picks up the cluttered debris of unresolved drama.

Ever wake up in the morning and the minute your mind tunes into the day, it begins rolling around the floor of your to do list, picking up all the emotional lint, dirtball tasks and rubix cube of un-made decisions you’ve left lying around?

A chaotic kerfuffle of priority one drama.

It is crazy, that in the end, that is all it is. Drama.

It sure doesn’t seem that way at the time. Not at all.

There is the myriad of issues and problems: deliveries that never got delivered, rotting wood, dying grass, the endless wake of those we’ve lost, the shifting politics of family, the unresolvable hurt of unconscious behavior and yadayadayada.

The drama is not what we need to do.

The drama is the thoughts we have about it, the feelings that we have about those thoughts, the second by second recalibrations we do based on those thoughts and feelings, the proliferation of tangents attached to those recalibrations and the absurd timetables we attach to all of it.

And this Task-Tree-Flow-Chart-of-If-Then-Scenarios forms the dizzying static that prevents us from tuning into one channel at a time.

Thousands of pixels populating the static of drama.

We defend the static as simply the productive buzz of problem solving.

Only it isn’t. Not at all. Not until you step back, can you see it for the static drama it really is. Static as in interference that does not cause motion and drama as in self-created unnecessary hoopla.

So, interfering hoopla that doesn’t add up to a darn thing!

But we so rarely step back, for fear of not catapulting forward.

Brain researchers have said that the modern day nervous system of most people is in a continuous state of low-grade anxiety, a constant fight, flight or freeze reaction.

This is certainly true for me.

Sure, there are occasionally pockets of calm.

But often, the only way I break through to calm is by breaking down my drama and then breaking free of my unconscious beliefs that create it.

Break through the drama…

break down the unconscious beliefs …

break free of unrelenting stress that blocks calm..

The beliefs that hold me back revolve mostly around thinking that self-sacrifice is the path to loving kindness.

I believe the more I do, the better person I will be.

But the truth is the more I do the more I feel I need to do, the more I see I haven’t done, the more I stop seeing beauty or joy or anything that steals time from my altruistic intention to DO MORE!

And the more I feel like an emotional cripple trying to run a marathon.

Self-sacrifice is NOT productive.

I believe the more I give, the more generous person I will be.

But the truth is the more I give the more depleted I become, and the more hurt or resentful I feel when other people do not express gratitude.

It’s not about giving. It’s about doing so out of obligation, guilt, fear, insecurity, need for attention. It’s about not getting clear about WHY you are giving, before you do.

It’s about being driven by what you think someone else will think vs. how you feel.

It’s about not leading from the heart.

It’s such an important distinction and yet one I rarely make.

The more I give without regard for whether it is taking something from me, the more I shut down. The more I distrust and misunderstand what it means to be truly generous.

Self-sacrifice is NOT generous.

I believe I should always take the higher ground.

When someone has behaved ungraciously or disrespectfully, I should assume they are suffering or didn’t intend it or for reasons I cannot see are unable to do better. Given these reasons, I should be the bigger person. Assume the best.

But this only works when you don’t abandon yourself in the process.

The truth is, when I completely ignore MY feelings in order to take care of someone else’s, I end up feeling doubly betrayed.

If I stand my ground, I can assume the best.

Self-sacrifice is NOT gracious.

My truth… is often not what I believe it to be.