Tag: history

Both

I think that I may have jinxed myself by being so grateful for all of the new things in my life this Thanksgiving. This week alone I found out that our longtime beloved family dentist has brought on a new associate dentist, and plans on retiring soon, and our longtime dog (whisperer) groomer, has moved. (Trip, our spicy Boykin spaniel, who likes only about one-and-a-half people beyond our family members is in for a rude awakening today, and so is the new groomer. Wednesday Bloody Wednesday)

Is it possible that both quotes, shown above, can be true at the same time? Like all opposite statements in this world, there can be truth to both sides. Two opposite “truths” can exist, and even thrive in the same world. Rarely does black and white thinking apply to anything as much as we seem to want it to, for our own feelings of security and control and peace of mind. The truth is, for me, before our longtime dentist and faithful dog groomer, we utilized the services of another dentist and another dog groomer, both whom I thought were incredible and irreplaceable. Both of whose services I seriously mourned when they moved on. Dare I say now, that their replacements turned out to be just as good, and perhaps even better than the ones before them? Is it possible that we will feel the same way about this new set of providers after a period of time? Usually, variety shows that many people have many different strengths, and often you don’t notice weaknesses in someone or something familiar, until you experience the contrast of a strength in someone, or something else.

We love our old, reliable, standbys because we have invested time and energy in them. We have stories with the people and the places and the services that we have experienced year in and year out. We have history. But often we feel unexpected delight and surprise when we try new things and we get new experiences under our belts, which after a while, often become our new favorites, until these “new things” become so familiar that they are transformed into our current reliable standbys. We tend to grow and blossom with the new knowledge and experiences in our lives, but yet the old will always be part of the root system from which we grow. The treasured previous people/places/things give us a format and a platform to better understand the contrasts and the nuances of new things. Plants need strong roots and vital new growth in order to thrive. So do we.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Timelines

A good friend of mine has been an experiencing an ongoing problem in her life for years now. She texted another episode to our friend group this morning. I recommended that she go through her texts, and to make a timeline of this issue and how many times she has experienced the pain and the hurt from this same situation again and again. It really helps to have this kind of thing put on to paper. When you visually see facts, and dates, and times, all laid out on a timeline, it helps to make sense of what is happening in your life, without emotions, or exaggerating, or romanticizing what has gone on. I have done this many times in my life with different situations. It is a big part of my keeping a daily journal. It keeps me honest and it gives me clarity. It shows me patterns, and the parts that I play in the patterns of my life. If you are having an ongoing issue with a person, or a job, or even yourself and your own behaviors, create a factual timeline of what, who, when, where and how, and see if you can make some sense of it all. See if you want to continue the pattern of your timeline, or if there are changes that you can make to put an endpoint to this one particular timeline/saga of your life. When we study history, we look at timelines all day long. Why do we study history? So we can learn to not repeat past mistakes, and to create better pathways for our future. Assignment for the day: Pick a problem that’s been eating at you, and create a timeline of that situation. Go through your calendars, your journals, your texts, your memory banks, your pictures, your social media . . . whatever tools that you have to help you to create your timeline. Get interested in yourself. Your life itself, is its own timeline. Visually see what this timeline of yours looks like, and make sure that you want to continue in the direction that you see this timeline going in.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday – Funday

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Credit: @BrendaMatusik – Twitter

Do you remember the days of being your parents’ remote? I do. Sigh.

I’ve been pondering a lot about the process of elimination. I have been thinking about how progress usually has a lot of mishaps along the way. It’s rarely smooth sailing.

My youngest son has epilepsy. The way you find a medication that will work for epilepsy, is purely by a process of elimination. You start with one medication, and you keep going with it, until you seize, or the side effects become unbearable. Then, you move on to the next medicine, and you start all over again. I imagine it is the same for many disorders and diseases. It’s never a simple process. It can be daunting and frustrating and disappointing.

In that light, I started thinking about how judgmental we are about ourselves on our own journeys in life, and also how judgmental we can be about others, and even about the generations who came before us. However, the reality is, most of the answers which we learn about anything in life, never become crystal clear until we test them out, right? You learn not to touch a hot stove because you experienced being burnt once or twice. You learn from your experiences, far more than you learn from any lectures. Your experiences give you an extremely visceral memory, to help to keep you on track.

I recently watched Squid Game. It’s a brutal, but fascinating watch. (SPOILER ALERT) One of the games that the contestants play is crossing a bridge, made of glass tiles which all look the same to the naked, untrained eye. Half of the tiles are reinforced glass that can hold a person’s weight, and half of the tiles are made of glass that will shatter, causing the contestant to fall to his or her untimely death. The first contestant to cross the bridge, quickly does the math. There are 18 steps to be made, in order to cross the bridge safely and intact. The first contestant has a 1/262,144 chance of crossing the bridge safely. All of the other contestants who follow the first contestant, get better and better odds, as the game goes along. The later contestants have absolutely benefited from the mistakes made by those who came before them.

Do not crucify yourself for the mistakes you make in life. Learn from them, and try to help others to not make the same mistakes that you have made. This is the main reason why we study history. History has a tendency to repeat itself, until we finally learn the lessons and take a new path. Do not be too stubborn to not learn from your own mistakes. Do not be too proud to learn from others, and their experiences. Be open to learn the lessons of those who have gone before us. At the same time, try to be compassionate when others make mistakes, realizing that people are not always “doing life”, with the same starting odds. We all make mistakes.

Quotes about Learning from others mistakes (12 quotes)

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.