“Our shortcomings are the eyes with which we see the ideal” Friedrich Nietzsche
it has been (and continues to be) so easy to become frustrated with the progress of growth and change in my life as i move through it. i will often start expecting things to happen at a certain pace and i very much judge my process by how much i have acquired and how much i am expecting to come in.
this is not reminiscent of the spiritual life i signed up for at all, yet i cannot seem to stop myself from returning to this thought process repeatedly. i often tell newcomers that if i judge my life by what i think it should be, i am comparing it to a fantasy. if instead, i look at my life just as it is, and contrast it to how it was before i started my recovery journey, i am glimpsing a more accurate perspective on where my life truly is. and i can find gratitude and acceptance much more easily.
when i remember to do this and live this more spiritual way, i can find ease in who and where i am, and feel satisfaction and good about my progress. lovely, when i remember to do this.
btw-could this post have any more elements with queer aesthetic?
You will never be happier than you expect. To change your happiness, change your expectation. Bette Davis.
2 comments:
This feeling has come up for me in the last few days and has left me feeling sad, and I didn't at first understand where the sadness was coming from....
a friend of mine has returned from a year abroad, yet I hesitated in contacting him, put it off for over a week, I thought I was scared at how he might judge me for not making as much progress in the last year as I should have done, that he would think I hadn't done enough...
I only just realised that this is my fear, and nothing to do with him. When I look at where I want to be and compare it with where I am I feel like I havn't accomplished anything at all, I become fearful of never gettting to where I want to be and this makes me sad.
But if I look at where I was a year ago, I have acheived so much, personal change, inner change, so how can I be so hard on myself?
But its so easy to condemn myself for not having what i think I should have by now, insted of being grateful for the thngs I have that I didn't have before.
I want to be kind to myself, loving, accepting, so how can I lose these judgemental thoughts about myself?
I think it's funny that you use the word "reminiscent" in relation to the change you signed up for, i.e., change that you could not be reminded of because it had yet to occur. It's like trying to remember the future.
Expectations, indeed.
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