I did it to myself. Oh,
I won't ever say the reaction by the other person was ever my doing,
because it wasn't. Their reaction is always their choice. However, my
choice of putting myself in a particular situation is always
my doing and I have to own up to it. Otherwise, I become blamey and
give my energy away to someone who likely doesn't deserve it in that
moment.
And that is what taking
responsibility (being accountable) for my own life looks like.
I started writing this
piece about two months ago and, for the life of me, I can't recall
what the situation was I had placed myself in to generate the thought. That probably says something about the life-altering importance
of what it was. Whatever the choice then, it's odd how
circumstance seems to rotate around some ethereal Maypole until it
feels as if your past life (situation) is flashing in front of your eyes...
again.
Haven't I been here
before?
I was out doing my
thing the other day. You know... getting a thing-a-ma-hooey
for the whats-it-for so I can do the hokey pokey and shake it
all about. While I'm wandering the aisles of some warehouse-ish, florescent box
like an Irish Setter scurrying to and fro with my nose nosing and my
ears earing and looking for whatever it is I'm looking for, I
overhear a couple having a rather heated, though pointedly hushed,
discussion in the next aisle. It wasn't anything I haven't heard
before. ~sniff~ Or smelled, for that matter. It's pretty easy
to smell bullshit these days. I grew up hearing and smelling it.
She was trying to
reason with him and it was getting nowhere. He was blaming her for
forcing him to go shopping and putting him in a bad mood.
He said... she said...
they said... then no-one said.
At some level, if he
had taken responsibility for his actions (that is... he chose
to be there in the first place and he chose to be in a bad mood), the foray into the big box store with
huge packages of stuff you can't use in a lifetime may have gone much
simpler and much, much more joyously.
Far too often we look
at life as unfair when it isn't life which has put us in a particular
situation in the first place.
Our choices put us there.
If I look at every
situation I'm in as a choice I have made, then it follows I can make
another choice to correct course or to backtrack. At no point am I
compelled to stick with a decision to the bitter end simply because
I, someone else or societal pressure believes I should “suck it up
and stick it out”. I always retain the choice to opt out. I'm always allowed to say "Oops".
Life happens because we
choose to be where we are.
Life isn't “doing it
to us”. Life is supporting our decisions based on the choices we
make.
Life is fair.
If you choose to live in misery when it was your choice to be there in the first place, awesome! More power to you! I'm just not sticking around to see the show.
Amen... or something
along those lines.