I am having some less than flattering self-awareness moments recently. First, someone was trying to schedule something with me and I started rattling off, “Well, I have a mammogram, and then my husband has a colonoscopy, and then I am going to be having some dental work done (interspersed with the thought, “Oh yikes, did I pick up our prescriptions?) and then my husband has a dermatologist appointment . . . “
And that’s when I realized that I belong on one of those Progressive Dr. Rick commercials. “Help for people who are becoming their parents.”
Second, my poor, sweet husband asked me what I planned on doing yesterday afternoon and he opened a Pandora’s box that he didn’t see coming. I honestly knew that he meant the question innocently. As he calmly (and tentatively) explained at dinner yesterday, he didn’t want to make the lunchtime conversation all about himself, and I knew that this was a fact, even as snakes were popping out of my head, and fire was shooting out of my eyes, when he originally asked the question. There was no judgmental, accusational tone in his question. The judgment was all mine, and I was projecting.
“What are you going to do now? What’s next? What are your plans?”
I’ve been doing this same judgmental projecting a lot lately, when friends, family members, and acquaintances, innocently ask me what my plans are now that I am an empty nester. The question stresses me because I haven’t honed in on the answer yet, and that bothers me. I’m a goal directed person. I am a Sagittarius with a pointed arrow. I am used to my time being so scheduled up by other people’s schedules, that I barely have time to think. Now I have time to think. Now I have a pretty empty slate. And my judgmental, bitchy, pressuring alter-ego, loves to ask myself those same questions, but with an unquestionable judgy, impatient, hypercritical, tsk-tsk tone. Hence, beware the poor person who is just being kind, and curious, and interested in me, when they innocently ask, “Oh, so what are your plans now?”
If I don’t contain myself, my defensive response is an either frosty, or fiery (depending on the day and the importance of keeping the relationship), “I plan to rip your head off and feed it to my flying monkeys.”
The key to any kind of change in life is becoming self aware. This I know. I think that if I become more kind and patient and allowing of myself to take my time strolling on to this new path in my life, I am less likely to take offense of other people’s questions about my life. If I allow myself to become less high strung and stop the need for fast-pacing and marching straight ahead, and instead, allow myself some slow meandering, I will see other people’s interest in me, and concern for me, in a different light. I don’t have all my plans set out for this new path, but one thing is for certain, I don’t want to have to walk my new path alone.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.