We are captured in a culture where our very identity is tied up with our accomplishments. We wear all we have to do like a badge on our shirt for all to see. In this rush to get to the next thing, we have left no time for ourselves to digest and assimilate our lives; this may be our biggest theft of all. We need time to catch up with ourselves. We need time to chew and ponder and allow the experiences of life to integrate within us. We need time to rest and to reflect and to contemplate.
Living the life that cries to be lived from the depth of our being frees up a lot of energy and vitality. The juices flow. Everyone around us benefits from the aliveness that we feel. On the other hand, suppressing that life, for whatever reason, takes a lot of our life energy just in the managing of the pretending.
When we don’t know what we want or we don’t have the courage to pursue it, everything that everyone else is doing looks tempting to us. We begin to lust after others’ accomplishments and others’ possessions. We get sidetracked from our own dreams and our own realness.
I often hear people say, “I just don’t know what to do.” I think more often than not, we do know what to do; the cost of our realness just seems too high at the time.
Carl Jung understood the fluidity of truth when he made the statement that what is true at one time for us, at some point no longer serves us, and eventually becomes a lie. He understood that truth changes over time;.
When we run from life, try to manage life, or leave our energy scattered here and there, we feel differently than when our whole self shows up with our thoughts, words, and actions congruent and unified. When we are centered in the moment, we can fully meet the ordinariness of life as well as the challenges of life.
We can’t save people, or fix them. All we can do is model, and that points the finger back at us.
Discontentment is the illusion that there can be something else in the moment.
I look away so that my eyes don’t betray the hurt I feel.
I’m at the stage of the job when you just wish you hadn’t started.
The attitude behind your words is as important as the words themselves.
Children don’t need to have their feelings agreed with; they need to have them acknowledged.
Sometimes just having someone understand how much you want something makes reality easier to bear. So.
It’s important to make a distinction between allowing feelings and allowing actions,” I replied. “We permit children to express all their feelings. We don’t permit them to hurt each other. Our job is to show them how to express their anger without doing damage.
It’s a bittersweet road we parents travel. We start with total commitment to a small, helpless human being. Over the years we worry, plan, comfort, and try to understand. We give our love, our labor, our knowledge, and our experience – so that one day he or she will have the inner strength and confidence to leave us.
Parents don’t usually give this kind of response, because they fear that by giving a name to the feeling they’ll make it worse. Just the opposite is true. The child who hears the words for what she is experiencing is deeply comforted. Someone has acknowledged her inner experience.
To be loved equally,” I continued, “is somehow to be loved less. To be loved uniquely – for one’s own special self – is to be loved as much as we need to be loved.
It’s also not helpful when parents respond with more intensity than the child feels.
Statements like these say to the child, “I don’t like what you did, and I expect you to take care of it.” We hope that later on in life, as an adult, when he does something he regrets, he’ll think to himself, “What can I do to make amends – to set things right again?,” rather than “What I just did proves I’m an unworthy person who deserves to be punished.
The attitude behind your words is as important as the words themselves. The attitude that children thrive on is one that communicates, “You’re basically a lovable, capable person. Right now there’s a problem that needs attention. Once you’re aware of it, you’ll probably respond responsibly.