Given that I've been an avid journal keeper for over four years now, I never feel the need to share anything personal on The Choir. However, I've recently been inspired by the way that Thought Catalog (http://thoughtcatalog.com/) shares deeply personal and relatable messages in such an impersonal, unassuming way. And after the day I had yesterday, I feel the need to share my personal key learnings in the most general way possible too. Interestingly enough they fall into one category: we're all clueless.
1. You think you know what you're doing until you get smacked in the face with the fact that you don't. No matter how much experience you have with a certain type of person, project, vessel of communication, there's really no mastering of anything. Circumstances always get in the way. Other people, projects, forms of communication get in the way. And then, regardless of how much control you are capable of taking over a situation, your control can easily be lost.
The takeaway? I have been trying to master the art of keeping calm and letting things work out for a while now. But having recently tiptoed a little too far over that line, I have seen why my psyche has always kept me naturally anxious. While it's great to be able to keep collected in moments of stress, it's essential to never overestimate the power that you really have over a situation. Always expect that the worst can happen. Always anticipate that, no matter what you do to prevent it, the worst will happen.
2. True friendship is more obvious than you want to believe. So often we find ourselves making excuses for people who half-ass their relationships with us. It's because we enjoy their company, we have history, or simply because they're there. But then they don't call. They don't carry their weight. And you're left wondering, how are we friends and yet they can't have the courtesy to make plans with me until 5 minutes before? How are we friends and yet I feel like I can't text them, call them or ask them to hang out whenever I want? Or the best - this person is annoying me. They are supporting me in decisions that are destructive of either myself or people I care about. They are molding my thought processes to suit their needs from me right now, not my needs for me for the rest of my life.
The takeaway? If you're asking yourself these questions or realizing these things about these people that you have so conveniently labeled as friends, then maybe the word 'friend' should be reconsidered. I wish that there was a middle-ground word like "friends with benefits" or "main squeeze" that applied to the friend world because there has to be something between acquaintance and friend. There has to be something that defines that grey area where frustration, secrecy, exclusivity, selfishness and annoyance seep in. But regardless, I know who my friends really are and who they aren't. I know who I can communicate with freely without being self-conscious and who I can't. And you do too. Think about it.
3. And finally, the kicker. The one thing that has been nagging me since around this date 5 months ago and has materialized in more ways than I'd like it to. People are disappointing. People will disappoint you. And no matter how long you know and love them, no matter what they have said to or done for you in the past, no matter how many heart strings and memories pull you back into believing that they are truly good, but they're just lost... there is nothing that can change this. And I don't just mean friends, lovers or families. Bosses and colleagues can do this too. People let other people down all the time without even an inkling of accountability and the person who is the newest or lowest on the totem pole inevitably ends up being the one who feels the guilt.
The takeaway? If you know what I mean by this, being let down in a variety of settings, then you know the first step to moving past it is managing yourself. Remain self-aware. Keep in touch with your role in certain situations. Don't lose sight of what things you are responsible for, but also don't let yourself fall into that bottomless pit of unwarranted guilt dug only by the greatest disappointments in people we care about, trust and believe in. Love, loss, wins, failures - these are all two way streets. But traffic doesn't always happen in both directions at once.
4. I know I said number 3 was the last one, but I can't help myself. While I was studying in London, I took a yoga class at my gym and the instructor said something I'll never forget. She told us that she knew we were in pain at some points during the class and that it was okay to feel and recognize pain. But at the end of the day, it was up to us to choose whether or not we were going to react to it. We could feel the pain and fixate on it and act on it by inevitably falling to the ground and giving up. Or we could feel the pain, acknowledge it and persevere. In all situations, it is essential that we feel the way we feel and acknowledge the way we feel. But that anxiety, emotion, anger, etc. that acts like a parasite on our conscience is the product of a reaction to, not an acknowledgment of, things that we have experienced. Happiness and peace with a situation does not come from dwelling, exploding and bursting into flames. Happiness and peace comes from a recognition of tension followed by, in time, movement onward.
The takeaway for all of this, as I forewarned, is that we are clueless. But we don't always have to be. There are so many signs in our daily lives screaming at us to make decisions, change decisions, disconnect, reconnect, take accountability for ourselves, and LEARN something from these years and years of being tortured by life's twists and turns. And I know it sounds so much easier said than done, but if I have the time to realize these things from past experiences while still getting punched in the face by new ones, then I know you can too.
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