Making my own life

I am realising after writing my past post how at 55 I had still not fully separated from the pain of so much of my past.  I have not been able to sustain work in the world for some years. I live a simple quiet life with my dog and lately I see only one or two others.  I know it doesn’t seem like much of a life, in fact a few years back an old school friend told me I lived half of a life.   And today I feel so young.   I wonder how emotionally mature I really am at 55?  But is emotional maturity the entire ideal?  I have gained wisdom in my life but I have not really had the muscles to make my own life.

It appears to me that there is work before me.   I went through a very deep lost feeling experience last week towards the end of the week.  And yet when I see other’s lives full of such stress and strain to make practical ends meet I am very grateful for what I do have now.  I have a home, I am not homeless and I so easily could have been.  Today I want to count my blessings amidst the loss as life is a mixed bag.  There is happiness amidst the sadness, just as there are pearls amongst the stones.  None of us get it really easy and some of us have so much wounding and fracturing in our lives.  What is given to us is what we have, the hand of cards we are dealt.  We make certain choices and they lay out our karma.  We often don’t make wise choices and so often we choose out of an unconscious past that replays in ways we may not see until much further down the line.  Often we don’t have the necessary emotional insight until after consequences play out as they do.  Then we get what we need even when we don’t like it and can then choose whether to learn from that.  In the end it’s up to us what we make of it, how we respond.  Do we choose to respond or react and if we react, allow our instinctive reactions to guide us even if others say that is misguided?

Life involves so much learning and that takes time.  And learning is never over until we die.  And perhaps even then our souls go on to further learning, until the next incarnation.  Who knows, we can only make up own lives and choose what me make of that.