Today's
quotation:
We
face up to awful things because we can't go around them, or
forget
them. The sooner you say 'Yes, it happened, and there's
nothing I can do
about it,' the sooner you can get on with your own life.
You've got children
to bring up. So you've got to get over it. What we have to
get over,
somehow we do. Even the worst things.
Annie Proulx
The Shipping News
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Today's
Meditation:
I've
so often tried to avoid facing or even thinking about the
negative things in life because they scared me
terribly. I believe that I've always been scared that
terrible things won't end--that they'll come into my life
and stay forever and make me miserable until the day I
die. But I've learned that they really don't do that,
and once I started accepting them for exactly what they are,
they really don't frighten me any more, and they're much
easier to get over rather quickly.
And I agree completely with Annie--we've got to learn to get
over things quickly because other people need us. No,
we don't always have to be strong for others, but if we are
we're doing them an invaluable service and contributing to
the positive side of the world.
But how do we get over them? Some things are
devastating, but it's important to keep in mind that often,
they're devastating because we let them be so and because we
don't accept them, hoping against hope that if we deny them,
they won't affect us as strongly. That's exactly why
acceptance is so important in our efforts to overcome the
awful things in life. If the things have happened,
they've happened. Things are as they are, and denying
that fact won't make anything better at all. There
really is nothing to do about something that already has
happened, but there's much to do about the recovery from it,
as long as we're ready in heart and mind and spirit to
actually work towards making things better.
Has someone hurt you? Accept that it's happened and
you can work towards recovery. Deny that it's
happened, or tell yourself that it doesn't matter, and
you'll be stuck. A death of a loved one? It's
happened, and things are as they are now--when you accept
the death, you can move through your grief towards
recovery. We're more than willing to accept a broken
bone and get a cast put on it, but somehow it's easier not
to accept some of the things that happen to us--and when we
don't, we put off the healing indefinitely.
We are resilient beings, but our resiliency is dependent
upon our ability to accept situations for what they are
rather than wishing that they were something that they
aren't.
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