"One who conquers others is strong; One who conquers oneself is mighty." I care not to conquer others, but to simply understand, and help if I may do so. Conquering myself is another story, this story; one that is sometimes not simply for me to understand.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

To Just BE

About 4 or 5 months ago, maybe longer now, maybe less, I came to a conclusion. All my life I have been the story of the 2 internal wolves that are fighting for supremacy. In that tale, they are ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ Within me, they are ‘logic’ and ‘intuition.’ Which one gets fed the most in that tale wins, and perhaps within me as well, but not really. ‘Logic’ wants to rule, but ‘intuition’ has the first and final say. With all that has been going on in my life, I have just grown tired. Tired of thinking about everything. Tired of trying to “figure it all out.” Tired of fighting within myself about why and how and who is responsible and what does it all mean. I generally know all of this so why bother discussing it over and over in my mind. The parts I do not know come to me sooner or latter. I find myself imagining other perceived outcomes to events that have passed, sometimes months or years ago. I find myself arguing over ‘who’ is responsible when ‘who’ does not matter as much as ‘why.’ And how much does ‘why’ really matter? I have spent a good majority of my life, especially the past 17 years (since I quit drinking) trying to figure out ‘why’ and “what it all means.” That quickly leads to how I can do better next time or coulda-shoulda-woulda. Then comes the preverbal “ya buts.” I try to convince myself that I want to ‘learn’ so I will just get 'IT' and not make the same mistakes. Yet, here I am! Sometimes I do and sometimes I do not and so what? See, here I am doing it again. My conclusion: just BE. No more fighting with myself, no more over-analyzing, no more trying to figure it all out. I am spending far too much time fretting when I could be just BEING; just living and not over-thinking everything. Turns out just BEING is a little harder than expected. You see, I either am BEING or I am not BEING. “Do or do not; there is no try.” Sometimes in my quest to just BE, I am actually only holding it all in and not working through it then letting it go. Life is flying by so quickly that one day it will all be done and I will be wondering what happened and what did I just do. Why spend that time fighting with myself?

Our bodies do not know the difference between a real and a perceived threat. To our bodies, all fear is real. Only in our minds do we know “real” fear. Therefore, we are in control of our fears, assuming of course that we can control our minds, ha, ha.