This world : afternoon reflections

This world can seem cold and brutal at times..it can be a confusing place where if we do not have a strong inner center we may end up being blown around by any breeze. Much as I think emotions are so important, acting on the base of strong emotions may not always be the wisest thing. There are times saying that angry thing won’t help and may make an already inflamed situation worse.

I was thinking about this after reading a meditation by Joyce Meyer on showing tolerance for other’s foibles a moment ago. She was speaking about her relationship with her husband and things that used to annoy her which he does around the house. At times she found it best just to make a correction or allowance if the behavior was not earth shattering rather than keep nagging him and pointing it out. There are times too we cannot see our way into another person’s heart. We see they are troubled but we do not know how best to help… I was reading something else earlier at the bookshop written by a woman who underwent a breakdown during which is was almost impossible for her to socialize or reach out, hard as she found contact in that situation due to her emotional fragility, she was saying it helped when other’s reached out, just to say I care with no other pressure.. It made me think of how I struggle when my sister goes into that place that is deep and dark and how I then back off instead of keeping reaching forward and also get a bit self centered about her not reaching out to me when really she is just not capable of it at that time.

It is a difficult situation to be placed in over and over again, especially now that Mum is not alive any more.. My sister seems to have been ‘on a high’ for those 9 months or so she was out of hospital last year. She got a lot done but made purchases and did things that, according to her were not in alignment with her real self.. I got pulled along in the frenzy for a while.. I sensed she was not really present and that trip we had to coast house was painful, to arrive there and see that her family had just packed up all my books from the upstairs area to put there own things there when they had not even asked moving it all into boxes in the garage really hurt.. I did not say anything about at the time. My sister later told me she expected me to ‘explode’ but i was not going to give anyone that kind of satisfaction.. When I get guilty feelings over not seeing her then I need to remember this stuff, but there is also sorrow that I am not able to extend myself at times.. like I always tried to do for my older sister over all of those years she was being cared for in a home for sufferers of acquired brain injury.

Its good to write about it today just to stop my thoughts going round and round in circles. I got out to the shops earlier and got a lovely book on daily readings to connect with God or Higher Power as well as some lovely prayer cards. I will post an image of one at the end of this blog.. all in all life is happy for me. I am finding the things that make me happy.. and often its the simple things but last night I really enjoyed and had a big laugh watching the Netflix series The Kominsky Method. I loved its take on grief and human absurdity and the performances of Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin are brilliant on a comedic level.. I was laughing and crying at the same time..

Luckily the world is no longer a brutal place to me but a place of love and peace,, sure there is a lot of harsh things, trouble, war, poverty and strife in the world but it also depends on what kind of perspectives or news broadcasts you tend to tune into.. I am over all of the fear laden stuff showing the dark side of human nature, yes it exists for sure but I don’t have to live in that world and keep my focus on it all of the time any more.. At the end of the day its all a matter of the choices we make and the perspectives we reach as well as the sense of irony and balance we can find from finding the wisdom in the interplay of both the dark and light sides of human nature.