So I’ve concluded that I have a love-hate relationship with my mind. The mind really is a beautiful thing to waste but it’s also a very complicated entity and, in my humble opinion, more than what many of us are capable of dealing with. It’s like any wide open space that isn’t used to our presence…nature always wins in the end.
I’ve been blessed with a very creative mind. It enables me to see the world in a very unique and intricate way. I am moved by colour and balance and harmony. I forever see the world through poetic eyes that may never fully understand the inner workings of tax returns or computer software! And I’m okay with that. My mind is romantic and whimsical and never gets enough of wishing that it could fly.
My mind however, can also become a very dark place. While I don’t think that it’s in its nature to be there, it has been known to drift…to wander…to venture to other side of the mountain that is engulfed with shadows. And sometimes, once it gets there, it doesn’t always know how to find its way back. My mind’s curiosity over such places has dwindled significantly over the past years (thankfully!) but in the rare occasions when it just can’t help itself…it becomes scary. I think that everyone’s been afraid of the dark at some point throughout their life but I find that the ghosts in your mind are exponentially worse than the ghosts in the closet.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been a very self-aware person, or at least tried to be. Ever since I was a little girl, I would ask myself why I did things a certain way or why I felt the way I did about various things. It takes a lot of energy to be “in your mind” that much and there were times when I wished that I had just let myself be a kid instead of trying to pick apart all the connections that made up who I was as a person, albeit little one at the time.
As I got older, this became a bit more of a problem because with age comes presumed wisdom and with that presumed wisdom comes the courage to go further. And when you travel to very dark places, it can often be hard to tell what is real and what is merely a shadow lingering in the night. You get confused, disoriented and before you know it, you can’t even remember how you got to there in the first place. Grounding yourself matters…having a compass or something to guide you back is necessary when you’ve roamed too far away from home. Unfortunately for me and my restless mind, I don’t care much for maps!
I used to think that it was necessary for me to be able to take these mental trips without getting lost. I somehow felt that it was essential to prove to myself that I could get there and back and still be the same person. Only now am I starting to learn that it’s not such a bad thing to stick close to home. Light is a good thing. Knowing where you’re going is a good thing. Leaving a trail of Hershey kisses behind you is a good thing. But deliberately throwing yourself to the lions just to see if you can get out with all of your limbs is not really a good thing. In fact, it’s a silly thing. I would never recommend it to my husband or my soon-to-be son or anyone else that I loved. In fact, I would probably smack them upside the head and ask them how they ended up losing all of their marbles!
It is hard though. I almost have to wonder if some of us are just born with an intrinsic need to push our emotional stability in ways that are not always healthy. For me, it’s been labeled as generalized anxiety, for others its obsessive compulsive disorder or perfectionism; the need to please or self-criticism. Choose your weapon…pick your poison, but for all of us, it’s a place in our mind that most people don’t go to…and I wish I could be more like “most people”. I wish I could see the shadows without having to see what hides amongst them. I wish I could look at unchartered territory without feeling the need to see where it goes. I wish I could free myself from the suffering that comes with confusing what’s real with what isn’t.
I wish I could understand that, for me, the real cancer isn’t a tumor…it’s a lifetime spent being afraid of one.
2 comments:
You are Bilbo Baggins. You go there and come back again, when it would make much more sense just to stay home.
Just trust that you are supremely safe and loved.
And you won't feel compelled to go there as often.
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