Some days all you want to feel is that sense of being fully accepted for who you are.
Some days all you want is to feel the tingle of excitement when you think of that significant person.
Some days all you want is to savour the thought, the sound and the feel of that special name in your mind, in your mouth and in your body...
I’ve had events in my past and they have had a big impact on my life. This is not unreasonable. Some situations were related to life and death. Some were not. Nevertheless they were all major milestones in my personal experience. They were important to me then.
While taking time out for reflection I have come to the realisation that events from the past should not DOMINATE every aspect of our present lives: they have an affect on us but they should not take over what happens to us each and every new day.
If we allow past events to constantly dictate current actions then we are draining away all our energies to feed the past and not focussing on the present or moving to the future. We cannot allow the past to CONTROL us. It may be that we wallow in the mire of our past histories as an excuse not to be PRESENT in the present.
If you had any dreams before those events, find them again. Make them your focus.
If you were dreamless then it’s time to start dreaming about your future.
When you begin to look forward you will know the beauty that is hope, things will change and a better way of living will immediately be yours.
You know that feeling you get that you can’t explain properly. That feeling that something is not quite right, or rather slightly amiss. What I think I mean is that it is not quite as you’d like it to be – right then, in that particular moment - to enable you to be entirely comfortable.
Well it’s sort of like that but a lot worse. It’s like an ache from a newly missing tooth. It’s like an emptiness that cannot be filled. It’s like a piece of the jigsaw puzzle that you can't find right there and then.
It is not a feeling of desperation.
It is more a feeling of gentle longing.
A feeling of comfort.
Like wanting to have a hot serving of that delicious steamed sponge pudding - spotted dick.
Like sitting huddled in a blanket in your childhood bedroom listening to the rain falling while you read Enid Blyton books under the covers.
Like lying on a garden bench, looking up at the clouds and imagining the shapes are all kinds of real things.
And, sometimes, this feeling of missing someone is something so new that you don’t quite have the right memory for it. But you know that you feel a strange void. You know that you want to refresh your memory of that person.
I feel that I want to be at peace in their company again. Nothing more. Just to share the same space at the same time.
Maybe also share a smile.
Maybe have an easy conversation.
Maybe just relax to background music.
Maybe notice the beauty of a flower on a spring day.
The feeling appears unexpectedly and … sometimes lingers.
Because something, someone, is missing …
So it is with my life sometimes. There is a decline in my emotional state followed or preceded by an emotional high – a forward motion. I often experience a seesaw effect.
There are many positive times, when the river is flowing, when it is present, when all is right with the world. The sun is shining – even in the winter, and the birds are singing cheerful songs outside my window as I snuggle up to the warmth inside.
And then there is the season of the ebb, the decline, the absence, when hope seems to have flowed away with the tide. At these times all I am aware of, all I am conscious of is the uncomfortable rocks, stones and pebbles at the bottom of the riverbed that I feel on the soles of my bare feet.
It is tempting to remember the ebbs in my life more than the flow as when I am in the drought it seems more pronounced. When I am visited by the reality of a lack in my life I stop and think. Sadness often accompanies these thoughts as my heart becomes thirsty for whatever it is I am missing at the time. This is usually the company of a particular person. A person who no longer features in my life in the way I wish they did. At times like this I either go into myself or reach out to friends.
I fight against my own internal tide. It is often hard to make myself reach out when I feel vulnerable, but I am learning to do so. It has proved to be better for me to talk to someone when I feel low. Failing communicating my feelings to a friend, sometimes accompanied by tears and halting sentences, I will find another activity to take my mind of the subject. I know that dwelling on that dry area, that past area, of my life will not bring forth fruit for me in my present presence so I make a resolution:
right now I grasp the weakness in me and send it out to sea.
If I stay with my sad memories I am allowing the matters that I am pondering to become a major part of my internal life. By constantly including the sadness in my thoughts I am giving it the ability to change me. It’s never easy, but it does get less painful with time. Even where I am now, how I feel today, I never thought that I’d reach this position when I first stood in the dry riverbed with only my tears for company. I know I still have a long way to go, but I feel I am moving in the right direction. A positive healthy destination for me.
When my life has swung towards the ebbing times I have reached back into my memory for an occasion when I felt presence not absence. A time when I was conscious of happiness in the ordinary things of everyday life. I reach into my immense sea of happy memories and reflect the blissful moments that I have experienced …and there are so many.
I have a tendency to forget this fact or not want to remember it when I am clouded with sadness. But it is usual that by the time I have revisited and enjoyed these events, the experience that seemed like a dry riverbed will have passed away.
And I will again be present in the bountiful flow of my life.
I will be the river that reshapes my own landscape.
