Twenty years! Twenty years…
It is hard for me to look back over the last twenty years and I am trying to wrap my head around doing so. This period has marked the hardest in my life. Maybe that is because it marks a period where many things happen in one’s life at my age.
I lost both of my parents.
Both of my children got married and moved to different parts of the world.
I changed jobs multiple times.
I had health issues, my wife had health issues, her parents had health issues…
It is easy to look at such a period with a level of disdain and get a bit down. And for this reason I am going to set my sights upon 2020 and beyond – learning from the past and leaning into the future.
I also looked over my journal from the past year and got a bit frustrated with my self. I see that I wrote a lot of the same thing over and over again yet did nothing about it. I believe that is the definition of insanity – doing the same thing repeatedly but expecting different results.
Thus, I really need to take a moment and reflect on what really isn’t working…repeatedly…
Also, I think I will burn that journal.
The distance between where we are and where we want to be is typically measured in effort far less than time. And time, especially as we get older, is our worst enemy. That twenty-year time-frame has gone by faster than I could ever have imagined. Additionally, far more happened than I thought would in that time-span.
It just shows how quickly life can get away from you.
However, the past is the past and there is nothing I can do to change that, so the only thing one can do is to move forward into the future.
Our family, when the kids were around, did yearly resolutions, as many do. However, for us it was not just a desire to make changes but became a bit of a yearly game to see how we had done. For the most part we got a good laugh the next year or looking back years and years before. Many of the same things came up, of course, but having done them yearly it was a look back at what we thought was important to us year over year and how time progressed for us as a family.
To wit, much like with that journal (that I did burn), the old saying became very true for me – “the more things change the more they stay the same.”
Breaking out of the habits of life that have been ingrained year over year for many years is far harder than we imagine. This because we have become comfortable with our habits. They are old, as are we, and if we are honest, we like them. They are part of us now. A somewhat indelible part.
I have read may very good books on the power of habits. In fact, one of the best is simply called “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg. It basically says that to break a bad habit we must replace it with a good habit….habitually. We cannot successfully use a negative to replace a negative. Thus, we cannot say, “I am fat, so I won’t eat.” Our minds see that as a double-negative. We must desire a positive change, “I want to be healthy so I can see my grandchildren” so that our brains have a positive desire and a positive purpose then do habitual things to replace the negative of eating poorly (or add in your bad habit).
This rings true to me, much as we cannot be happy without first striving to spread happiness. Meaning, trying to make ourselves happy is rarely successful. We try to replace sadness with things or experiences. It is really only when we strive to bring a bit of joy and happiness to others lives that we begin to experience the happiness and joy we desire.
The mind must strive down a path external to us to bring about what we, personally, need internally. We must lean into that which we wish to become.
I think Floyd (not Freud) said it best;
Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English (human) way
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I’d something more to say.
Harkening back to that journal that marked the time between my birthday in May of last year to the end of the year the “half page of scribbled lines” especially rings true. As a writer I strive to make my words meaningful. I realized my words to myself were anything but. I realized that that journal represented seven and a half months of “half scribbled lines.” None were fully scribbled or I would not have written the same thing so many times. I would have done something positive about it and changed that which I written over and over again.
I was not taking my own medicine. Living up to that which I so often write in lines here about positive change in one’s life.
This is not to say that life has been bad. It truly hasn’t. I have had friends who have had much more difficult times than I – far more difficult!
However, movement from where we are, regardless of where that is for us, starts with a step in a new direction.
Making change in a positive way – learning from our past and leaning into our future.
