Day 225: Why Didn't I Do Something About It?

Self-Forgiveness for Day 224: Not So Obvious (To Me Anyway)

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be angry at myself for allowing myself to live, for a very long time, in the way that I have been and for doing nothing about it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to carry on about, draw out, and/or threaten to do something about a situation that wasn't best for years instead of making the move to actually change it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be angry with myself for prolonging the inevitable. And I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to regret not making the move to change my situation much earlier when I had started to become aware that what I was living with/in/as was really fucked up and not cool at all.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be angry and bitter at myself and others for me begging externally for my situation to change.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be miserable for as long as I did - not seeing, realizing, nor understanding that being miserable is fine for a moment to support myself to make changes - and not a long-term solution where I had accepted it as 'wear for the road' and had come to believe that being miserable is normal - a sort of sacrifice of self for the greater good.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold on to the times when things were 'good' or 'okay' - getting myself caught up in the polarity of 'this is shit' but 'it's good sometimes too'. Bouncing back and forth instead of slowing myself down and facing what has been underneath it: a fear of the unknown.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear regret.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear change.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed my 'What if ...' thoughts to influence me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become angry and frustrated when things aren't going well, as I would want, or as I had expected - and for having held on to the anger and frustration and allowing it to accumulate into Rage instead of self-forgiving it in the moment and the moments that the same patterns have played out in the past.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to, with this accumulated anger, frustration, and rage, to act out with temper tantrums. become physically erratic, throw my arms up, point fingers, become intense, yell, and scream - not seeing that this is not an actual release of the accumulated emotions, only makes things worse, and conditions me to allow the behavior again - each time, going into it quicker than the last.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to change how I am responding to the situations that come up in my daily living - and I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become angry and frustrated with myself for my responses that aren't cool.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become miserable and dissatisfied with myself and how I am not responding in way that is supportive for me and others.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become jealous and resentful of others whom I have been perceiving as having freedom to do as they like, the ability to adapt and/or bounce back from bad situations, and easily make changes for themselves - and get caught up in this - instead of seeing that Freedom, Adaptability, and Change are words and ways of being that have yet to be defined and lived by myself - and to stop what I am doing with the reactions and work on that.

Day 203: Equalizing Stability

Recently, I observed one individual threaten, bully, and attempt to diminish another. The one on the receiving end of this attack, saw that it was their responsibility to stand up, face, and speak out a response - apparently, it is a part of their culture to do so where if someone 'calls them out', it is expected that they answer the call.

I saw this action as being admirable and as something that we all could be developing for ourselves. 

However, as the situation unfolded I saw that the one on the receiving end saw themselves as safe from their attacker - they have money and they have placed themselves into the system in such a way that they have become something like 'untouchable'.  Which was a fascinating thing to witness - how one in an actual position of authority directs themselves when faced with conflict.

Unfortunately, the element that did not exist was understanding and care. See, because the responder had still taken it personally that they were being bullied, they reacted. And in this state of reaction, they began threatening with greater measure.

What I realized from this is that even though someone is in a position of authority, has standing, and seems to be doing great things in the world, does not make them an individual that will always handle others in a way that is best. To many, it may be an obvious point - for myself, I have had the tendency to look up to others that I have seen as having a strong presence, voice, and an unshakable belief of themselves - and within this ignoring or accepting the details and consequences of our individual actions and words.

I also see clearly how we are all the same in how we're dealing with things. How our family, our education, our culture, our positions of responsibility in the world and our individual experiences - regardless if these things are positive or negative - have not been changing how we systematically process and respond to each other and our external environment. 

In this case, we see the same exact programming playing out of seeing others as separate from ourselves, seeing how they are in the wrong, seeing how they are doing something to us, seeing that we must defend ourselves, our honor, and our self-definitions and within this recreating the exact same war between us that we're working on stopping outside of us.

Don't you see? That until we stop this programming by becoming people that actually understand and care for ourselves and each other, that these battles and wars will continue to manifest? So, you can invest all your time, your energy and your money into stopping the evil that exists in this world but in the end, it will have been all for nothing and probably go right back to the way that it was because while we were focusing on stabilizing our external world, we did not see what was required to be stabilized in our inner and inter worlds.

A solution would be to stop ourselves from reacting which is easier to do when we direct ourselves to see with understanding rather than seeing something as personal. Further, it would be best in the long-run to take a look at our cultures and the beliefs that have been entrained into us about how we should or should not handle ourselves and others. Is it truly beneficial to hold onto these things when we see throughout time that it improves nothing? That there is always a winner and a loser? Somone with power and someone without? Do we want to continue repeating patterns when we realize that patterns produce the same results?

In closing, I propose that if we do in-fact dedicate ourselves to changing and creating stability in this world, that we utilize equal resources to changing and stabilizing ourselves and each other.