Blessings and lessons

Whatever relationships you have attracted in your life at this moment, are precisely the ones you need in your life at this moment. There is a hidden meaning behind all events, and this hidden meaning is serving your own evolution.~Deepak Chopra

Beginning today, I will create a new future by creating a new me. No longer will I dwell in a pit of despair, moaning over squandered time and lost opportunity. I can do nothing about the past. My future is immediate. … I seize this moment. I choose now. ~ Andy Andrews

 

Sometimes we judge our thoughts and actions, we evaluate our lives by another’s standards. And you and I may find ourselves wanting…we lack, we are not enough…or worse, we are unworthy, we are ‘bad’.  What stories – of success, failure, victimhood, loss, love, oppression to name a few – run rampant through your minds in times like these?

Do we or can we step back and be an observer, and see those stories – their origin and impact? Can we see past the illusions of our egos and minds? If so, I hope in that moment, we can laugh at the tricks our supposedly rational minds play.

In my moments of judging, I recall this story told to me – a true story which in some odd way brings home how judgments get in the way of our personal growth.

There was a woman – single mother – who lived with her young daughter. She had decided to focus her attention making a better life for herself and her young daughter. After all, she had made some rather poor judgments about men and relationships and vowed not put herself into such a situation again. Both mother and her daughter traveled along reasonably well, until the day when the then 17-yr old daughter discovered her mother was having an affair with a man half the mother’s age.  This young man was the daughter’s much ‘older’ boyfriend,as many had commented. Well, he was 26. As expected, there was a massive fallout between both women, and they never reconciled.

How do mothers or women of a certain age ought to behave?

What could justify her ‘poor judgments’ about men and relationships? Was the affair another one of those?

Would it make a difference if it was not an affair, but a romance?

What of the young man being involved with both women?

What if I was to say that the romantic nature of that relationship did not last but the young man remained a close friend, a confidante to the older woman until the day she passed on many year later, that he was at her bedside when she crossed over?

What of the young woman who never forgave her mother?

What of that young woman who was forever closed off to love?

So many ‘values’ and ‘judgments’ flying in my mind when I first encountered this story… and when my rational mind had had enough trying to grapple with the many perspectives and issues, and failed, I dropped to my heart and felt. As I found out, this was a situation for feeling, not thinking.

What was it like for the young woman – to feel betrayed, to lose the trust for her mother, to lose the innocence of love of a man? What of the older woman? The young man? What possessed them? What conflicts assaulted them? What compelled them? What loss?  What grief?

Yes, I could speak of love and soulmates, or responsibilities and obligations, of romance and desires, of betrayal and loss. Where would these conversations begin or end?

The realisation is we are human – in essence perfect, in behaviour flawed.

Be gentle, be kind to yourself. Forgive yourself. Learn from the lessons life throws at us, accept its blessings, grow.

There was ‘something’ between that young man and the older woman real enough to last decades. There is a certain blessing.

As for the young woman, I am saddened the experience momentary in time had marred her life. Lessons not learnt.

Whom would you rather be?

Appreciating life’s blessings & learning life’s lessons,
– FlorenceT

 

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