Friday, March 21, 2008

independence and gratitude

First of all, of course, Happy Naw-Ruz! I went to a nice dinner with my friend and classmate Holly to celebrate. It was a really nice night.

I had a dialogue today in which I came to two really cool understandings. One is, I don't believe in dependence. We are always in charge of ourselves and our emotional responses. So, I might choose to turn my happiness over to someone else but that's still a choice I made and I can unmake it at any time. I am always completely independent!

The other realization was how I can be happy when I don't get what I want. The secret is gratitude. Even if I don't get what I want I can be grateful for the good parts of my present situation, even for the changes because I don't have what I want. For example, I'd really like Fritz to be here and not in Europe. But I can be happy anyways because now I have the opportunity to explore what it is to miss someone and expand and consolidate the rest of my social support network. To miss someone, by the way, is to have a feeling of love and not know what to do with it because the person isn't there to show it to. That's what it is for me anyway (another dialogue realization). So all I need to do is to come up with ways to express that feeling of love even when the person I love isn't around, like praying for them, sending them reiki or just a positive thought, writing/calling/emailing them, or just taking a moment to appreciate them to myself.

I'm feeling really good.

2 comments:

ryran said...

Re missing 'n whatnot:
That definition really makes sense. What does it mean that I practically never miss anyone? Hmmm. I can think of a few possibilities. Interesting.

River said...

Maybe it means you know what to do with that love even when they aren't around? Or a kind of out of sight out of mind thing? I prefer to believe the first though.