End of your rope…
When you are in despair, sorry, and can’t figure life out, how do you deal with it?
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When you are in despair, sorry, and can’t figure life out, how do you deal with it?
I’m kinda partial to Chocolate, down-time, bike rides, walking the beach, getting lost in the woods for a while, regrouping, doing all that I know how to do, and then not worrying about the rest any more after I am certain that I have done my part and handled things to the best of the abilities that I have been given.
Worry is a lot like walking in circles; it gives you something to do, but it doesn’t change anything or get you anywhere.
I guess I’m just more grounded in reality that way. I say that because it seems like so many people are worried about what they will lose in this life if everything falls apart. Well, so what? what if you DO lose everything? Then what? Who you are is determined by what you do and how you react to that which takes place around you, not by what you have or have not. I think that by accepting this fact, that we came into this world with nothing, leave the same way, and are just “borrowing” everything else in the mean time, can philosophically set one free. If I lost everything in this world, family, friends, “stuff”, et cetera, it wouldn’t end the world, just make me regret some minor things that change nothing consequential at the end of the day. So I cope by looking beyond the temporal and trying to grasp the big picture of what life is really all about.
I had a loaded gun held to my head once, by a guy I was pretty sure was going to use it. My last thoughts at that moment were: “What a crappy way to die, on my knees and without a fight.” I didn’t care about anything else but that I wouldn’t have a chance to stop evil-doers from doing more evil, from hurting the other people in my store. I wanted those last seconds to matter.
I wonder about how many of the problems or perceived problems that people worry about in this life are really worth the fuss we make over them? Worrying about losing a loved one can be sincerely important. Worrying about losing your home or job is just a speedbump in life. Worrying about choices that someone else makes because they have free will is pointless; all you can do is let them go and make their choices and hope and pray for the best, unless you have the power to stop others’ bad choices from impacting other innocents, but then that would require actions, not angst.
I guess I’m trying to say that the world would be a much better place if we all worried less and acted more. Despair can have false roots of misplaced perceptions of importance on things or events that might need to have their status downgraded. Things that we can’t figure out may need to be put on a back burner, instead of being allowed to torture us inside endlessly and thus rendering us incapable of dealing with other aspects of the life passing us by. Do we really know that something we think is so important actually is? and if so, how will wrestling with ourselves over it endlessly make life any better? Just a thought.
Ancient Chinese proverb: the secret to patience is to do something else in the meantime (unless you’re watching a pot boil, in which case going and doing something else can result in a kitchen fire 😉
for more about what people despair about at the end of their lives, check out this blog: http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-of-the-Dying.html