~ Self-Help Morsels From Artist ALICIA M B BALLARD To you. ~ ©2006/07/08/09/10/11

Friday, December 31, 2010

There is no going back!


We often live out our lives either in the past or in the future, seldom in the present - as if we would be the undeserving thieves of this very precious moment!
There is always something to regret, missed, to yearn for, to change, mend... Something, there is always something in us, glueing us to the past, our past, everybody’s past ...
There is always something pulling us towards the future... dreams, goals, a different situation - anything other than what is now..! 
I am speaking from new learned wisdom.
About three years ago, I have been invited to re-join “a new and different” situation of my past, that I have, after a lot of soul searching and pain, estranged myself from. With apprehension I managed to allow myself to be “available” for this young person that I once loved and now was seeking my contact. Older and wiser, I felt I had all the emotional and intellectual tools to “be there” for this precious evolving being, so close to my flesh - could have been my own. But, wasn’t. These are the illusions we present ourselves to begin with. In believing that: “being there, supporting” was my long overdue duty, moral and emotional responsibility and also, to recapture “loving interrupted”. And that “close to my flesh” actually meant something near “sacred” - despite taking into consideration the situation and its background.
I owed this person, I told myself, I told her.
In reality, I did not.
At the time I did the best I could. The best I knew how. I did give it “all I could”, including nurture, love, guidance...
A few days ago I found myself face to face with a morbid, entangled, surreal “re-enactment” of the past... of course, a newer, younger version - but the same story repeating itself. The familiar manipulations, lies, deceptive behavior; familiar feelings aroused, the familiar disappointment, the familiar, inevitable conclusion. 
By sheer accident I learned of the sordid background and behind the scenes maneuvers of what was at hand. Once again bewildered! (But) Why was I surprised?
A couple of days later while analyzing what had transpired, I saw my error in judgement and, also in my belief that one can actually fix something for someone that had been derailed many years ago, by someone else!
I also thought of a former love I held still in much esteem (and hope) and, willingly “waited” for his situation to improve...
Of past relationships when in the communion, joy of the moment, eternal friendship was sworn ...
Of people given the benefit of the doubt...
Of those I (would like to) believe will change...
Of what I would change if I could go back in time...
How different, my mapped out  future is going to be...
I concluded it was all nonsense.
I could only be here now, in this moment. It never made any more sense than now, when I realized I took it upon myself to right a wrong that was not mine, in the life of someone that I really did not know...(although, almost flesh!), that I did this to feel loved, needed, useful - to end up being shown, I was none.
How things play out in our heads and hearts is very different of how things play out in life. The entangled dynamics of our relationships only flourish because we cannot manage to see either beginning, middle or end. Yet they are all separate situations. “Incidents” in a given moment.
With some people we may live many wonderful, continued sequences of moments... with others, one moment is all that should suffice, as with the “stranger” we pass on the street.
How callous and cold does all this sound! Doesn’t it?
Not really.
How much emotional, intellectual, love, health, survival energy can I afford to mismanage, throw away?
How much time will I focus on that which is not positively evolving, on which, is actually draining my limited storage, capacity to give,  love - without receiving.
To give the other cheek, after being slapped?
To live in subtle “abuse”! Either by distraction or lack of awareness, misinterpretation of facts, illusions, misplaced (?) dreams and goals...
An entire new perspective opened up for me after this situation, which I did conclude for good this time. I sent it back emotionally and intellectually, to where it belongs - in the past. 
I must admit that a deep sadness for all that could have been resurfaced and lightly lingers in the air - in whiffs, as if just teasing and testing me, would I dare live in the moment or, be sucked back into the dark hole of the past and, the so elusive future!?
Once more proving that everything is a process, which, we begin with awareness and consciously work at it, until we change the behavior.
I concluded, we only owe ourselves (and others) our most compassionate, deepest honesty in any given moment, that alone must suffice, as we cannot go back and change the past, nor predetermine our future.

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