Resistance is Futile
Yesterday, just as I was leaving work, I phoned my massage therapist and made an appointment for the next day, 3pm. I wasn't sure why I was doing it, as I usually see massage as a way of rewarding myself for working out hard, or to relieve pain from an injury. I am neither injured, nor have I been working out very hard.
As I was having my muscles rubbed, my mind kept telling me to relax, that I just needed to let the stress melt away. But my mind was having none of that. Instead, it was doing all kinds of parlor tricks to keep me from acknowledging what I was really feeling: sadness.
Why would someone with a blooming relationship, a great new job and a healthy family and gorgeous city to live in need to be sad? Besides, I told myself. I need to be up beat when my friend comes to visit me, and I need to be upbeat for Balash, because he has been feeling down and I have no excuse for feeling like crying.
Then I realized the futility of it all. Resisting being sad, only it made it more painful. Resisting anything makes anything more painful, a struggle, misery. The minute I gave myself permission to feel sadness, there were some tears that came to my eyes, but more over, I felt relieved. It was OK to be human.
Then I took a look at what else in my life I was resisting that was exhausting me. I discovered I expend energy resisting being fat, ugly, sick and lonely. It all translates into a hectic mode of being that keeps me chasing my tail. Never loosing any weight, never giving myself the chance to feel beautiful and above all never letting anyone get close. What a surprise that might be to my loving boyfriend.
The worst of my resistance comes in the form of my self-expression. The more I resist my life, the less I express myself. I don't spend time writing in my blog, I don't practice my voice, I put off exercising and most awful of all, I don't speak. I had my first meeting at work the other day, and I had so much to say, so much that I am knowledgeable about that I didn't jump in and share. All because I felt I was too new. I kept whispering in my mind "don't say anything, don't say anything, don't make the other coordinator feel threatened by you." No wonder I made an appointment with my massage therapist. It gave me a chance to confront myself.
When my self-expression suffers, my whole life shuts down. When I don't use the courage I know I have, my life because less delicious. Life has always occurred for me as a buffet for us all to dine on, to explore and cherish. It is so easy to forget that, when we resist any part of us. The biggest travesty there is, is to shut ourselves down and not really BE with people.
I resist no more. Right now, I am sad, I am fat, I am ugly, I am afraid. I give up resisting so that I may emerge on the other side, and taste the sweetness of life once more.
World Girl
As I was having my muscles rubbed, my mind kept telling me to relax, that I just needed to let the stress melt away. But my mind was having none of that. Instead, it was doing all kinds of parlor tricks to keep me from acknowledging what I was really feeling: sadness.
Why would someone with a blooming relationship, a great new job and a healthy family and gorgeous city to live in need to be sad? Besides, I told myself. I need to be up beat when my friend comes to visit me, and I need to be upbeat for Balash, because he has been feeling down and I have no excuse for feeling like crying.
Then I realized the futility of it all. Resisting being sad, only it made it more painful. Resisting anything makes anything more painful, a struggle, misery. The minute I gave myself permission to feel sadness, there were some tears that came to my eyes, but more over, I felt relieved. It was OK to be human.
Then I took a look at what else in my life I was resisting that was exhausting me. I discovered I expend energy resisting being fat, ugly, sick and lonely. It all translates into a hectic mode of being that keeps me chasing my tail. Never loosing any weight, never giving myself the chance to feel beautiful and above all never letting anyone get close. What a surprise that might be to my loving boyfriend.
The worst of my resistance comes in the form of my self-expression. The more I resist my life, the less I express myself. I don't spend time writing in my blog, I don't practice my voice, I put off exercising and most awful of all, I don't speak. I had my first meeting at work the other day, and I had so much to say, so much that I am knowledgeable about that I didn't jump in and share. All because I felt I was too new. I kept whispering in my mind "don't say anything, don't say anything, don't make the other coordinator feel threatened by you." No wonder I made an appointment with my massage therapist. It gave me a chance to confront myself.
When my self-expression suffers, my whole life shuts down. When I don't use the courage I know I have, my life because less delicious. Life has always occurred for me as a buffet for us all to dine on, to explore and cherish. It is so easy to forget that, when we resist any part of us. The biggest travesty there is, is to shut ourselves down and not really BE with people.
I resist no more. Right now, I am sad, I am fat, I am ugly, I am afraid. I give up resisting so that I may emerge on the other side, and taste the sweetness of life once more.
World Girl
posted by World Girl at 5:30 PM
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