Dealing With Things

      I’d like to say: “Last of the crazy weeks!” But then I realize that it’s almost September, and it’s picking up all over again. Oh well, at least the craziness to come is less stressful than the craziness that is about to be passed. Supposedly the sister-in-law leaves tomorrow. My wife swears she’s taking a break from visiting her mom after this week. She generally goes over every Tuesday, but after having been over there 3 or 4 nights a week, for the past 6 weeks, she says she needs a break. I’m sure her mom does too. House guests for a month!? That can’t be easy for anyone. I hope she’s been able to deal with some of the things she needs to deal with. It can’t be easy to go back to the empty home she found her father dead in, especially when she doesn’t really seem to have anything going on up there. “Up there” being Northern California where she lives. In a way I feel bad for her. I know everyone grieves differently, but that also leaves room for those who don’t grieve at all. From what I’ve heard, read, and seen grief needs dealt with. As far as I can tell, she’s never really dealt with anything. If we’re not in the practice of getting over things, it’s not a skill we “pick up.” Without someone being there, helping you through, or at least guiding you through how to process, the wound stays open. And, unfortunately, I think she has a lot of open wounds. I think they all do. Some lesser than others, but it seems like “dealing with the problem” was not taught in their household. It was more of a “don’t talk about it, and it will just go away” household. In my experience, nothing goes away. And, if you tuck it down for too long, it starts to affect your behavior in ways you would never even know. Lives get ruined by not facing the truth.

     I suppose we all have it somewhat. There are probably things in our memory banks that caused us grief when we were little that we don’t even know about, and have never dealt with. I guess that’s part of life’s journey, discover these little tidbits, so that we can eliminate them from our behavioral repertoire. I even noticed myself while I was typing this, I was going to type “I’m a big fan of dealing with things head on, as soon as there seems to be an issue.” Then I thought about the toilet in the back bedroom, that I haven’t got around to fixing yet. Then the sink in the kitchen started gurgling again, reminding me that I haven’t taken care of that yet either. I actually got up to put a damper over the drain hole, so it doesn’t distract me while I do this. So, I did something about it, but at the same time it reminded me that I don’t really take care of things as soon as possible. So, in a way, I did something as soon as possible, but I should have tried to deal with the issue a while back. But since I’ve found a way to relieve my irritation, the actual problem still exists. Much like what I’ve been kind of writing about. Although, I will say, in personal relationships I feel it is much better to get right at it, and since that’s what I was writing about, I feel it still might fit. Taking apart a machine I know nothing about and trying to solve a problem I know nothing about seems a little more complicated than asking someone: “Are you alright?” “You don’t seem to be acting like yourself lately, is everything alright?” You don’t have to be a scientist to listen. Many of us have more natural wisdom than we give ourselves credit for. I credit that to constantly being told, or shown, that we need someone else to make these tough life decisions for us.

     Whoa, I’m getting a little deeper than I thought that I would. (Insert juvenile joke here) But to me that’s one of the great benefits of life, being able to see the connectedness of things. Writing about dealing with the grieving process led me to take a look at how I say I feel about something, and about how my actions match how I say I feel about it. Now I can take the time to reflect on how I deal with things. There are so many ways for us to get closer to our real truth, and as I have heard said before, the unexamined life is not worth living. We need to be checking ourselves. We need to be evaluating whether or not we’re living up to our standard. We need to know if we have a standard! Going back to something I touched on earlier, a lot of us, well, I guess all of us, start off being told what to do. We’re little kids, we need told what to do. But ideally, we’re being told what to do with the idea that we will one day be people capable of thinking for ourselves. This does not seem to be the case in a lot of cases. It feels like an overwhelming amount of people are not being trained to think for themselves. And now we’re kind of stuck with all of these people that are incredibly indecisive and without knowing it, are living in a state where they need to, or want to, be told everything. Not ever having been given the feeling that they are capable of understanding their own needs. It makes people dependent rather than independent. And what’s worse, is that seemingly a lot of these people who have this desire hidden in them, don’t even like following the rules or being told what to do! It creates an unsustainable existence, and eventually the person will crack. I just hope that when they “crack,” it is the revelation of truth that frees them.