Preferences #35 ©
Perhaps as a child you did the “Connect the Dots” game. At the beginning the shapes were very simple, and you finished them, correctly guessing the right item to the praise of your parents or teachers. As you progressed, your confidence would be such that as soon as you connected dots of four legs you would guess “a horse,” and then would be disappointed that it was a cow, as you actually liked horses better than cows. Or, you may have guessed a dog, and it turned out to be a pig, because again you preferred dogs. Still, your subconscious mind learned to ‘connect the dots’ for lots of things and actually doing deductive reasoning, as you were right more often than wrong. You were learning – growing from these preferences practiced – influences of yourself, your parents, teachers, and friends: athletes were good people, even heros as they saved the team by some great feat; an actor or performer won an award because of a great talent; or someone won a contest because of their beauty; bosses made a lot money because they were smart. These were logical conclusions from your cultural influences and even more so, subliminal programming of it.
Eventually you developed ‘sensors,’ those things that resonated within you subconsciously as being what you wanted, or what was good to have, again influenced by those around you. These varied from what food to eat, clothes to wear, activities to do, classes – schools to attend, jobs to seek, people to date, etc. on and on. At the same time, what those people around you said, or thought of your selections also influenced, or often changed your sensors. We all developed preferences and believed that they were what was best for us, as they would make us happy, fulfilled, successful, etc. In our youth or early adult years, connecting the dots may have been easy. No surprises here. How you judge something is related to your personal context – the framework of how you look at it, or relate to it. Something “taken out of context” means the whole picture or the circumstances involved that created the situation, is not included. Context is what shapes our life, and is the decisive direction of what we do. Therefore more than experience makes the quality of what we do – if you’ve been taught incorrectly or inadequately, for instance, affects the source of the effectiveness. But satisfaction from that process doesn’t always play out the way expected, as choice can be a wild card.
Skip ahead to a mature adult, and perhaps a job or relationship that didn’t work out the way we expected. It was more than disappointing, it just wasn’t supposed to be that way. It had seemed that everything had been perfect, or even resonated with us at the beginning. Sure we may have had to adapt, or do things we didn’t like, or be treated how we would have liked, that’s life, we were told. Most of our sensors were still being fulfilled, but maybe some new sensors we had chosen totally on our own had now been added. The happiness was gone, but we didn’t want it to end that way at all. Fear may pop up as we wonder where will our happiness / success would come from now? Some people may have even questioned why you were naive enough to add happiness to the quotient. Were you trying to live a fairy tale, or what? Who did you think you were?
I think most us accept by now that certain people and things are brought into our lives for a particular purpose/learning experience for us, and when it is complete we move on, or they do. Yet some of us cannot accept the ending, even if it has been an obvious drifting apart for the good of you both. The problem here is sometimes the person or thing has keyed into too many of our Past ‘sensors,’ those things that for so long we believed and deeply knew, or others told us were best for us to be happy. You don’t just leave a good job, or good marriage/relationship because you aren’t happy all the time, do you? If it was good, is happy overrated or necessary?
Let’s take the long, ‘happily’ married couple: when you first met and were together, it reflected to you so much of what you sought to have in this life and in a relationship. This person fit all of your preferences, they clicked all of your sensors at that time. Then, you grew in different directions from different stimulus, which created new sensors. This is especially true when the relationship started young, or lasted many years, or one person had more upheavals than the other. It may be difficult to accept that you are on different paths now. Resisting change, you make rationalizations of what you thought it could or should be. You created it to be something that it was not meant to be – what you wanted in the long term. There were many tremendous benefits for the short term, but eventually your paths diverge to go separate ways for peace of mind.
If you cannot accept this scenario, it turns into the ‘square peg in a round hole’ syndrome. You are trying to keep something that no longer is, simply because it once triggered some sensors within you. The fantasy is sometimes continued by anger or emotional outbursts-tantrums, as reality of the situation becomes more obvious and impossible to accept. While you are not your emotions, we do allow them to control us sometimes. Just as both the cow and horse have four legs, there is now only a small part of this person or thing that originally triggered the sensor that is real any more. The rest is unfortunately, not what you want, or most importantly need at all now.
Exercise: Space and time are needed to step back, and be objective in order to let go and detach from the situation, relationship, job, etc. Once the clarity is brought in, we can see the lessons which this whole thing has been for us, and that those doors of new growth opportunity are swung wide open. Yet we need to accept that we had to go through the experience, whatever it was, to reach those doors with the opportunities. Those people we knew, job we had, or even children we created, had purpose in our life and us in them. The old adage of ‘something good always comes out of something bad,’ is not often realized until later down the road with clarity and acceptance of what it was.
We sometimes only want to remember the good stuff, yet it is usually the difficult times that are the best teachers, and bring the learning opportunities we needed. This is why the Universe reminds us that there really are no mistakes, all of our experiences have a purpose and reason for us to learn, if we are willing to do so even if painful. Sometimes those people or things from the Past will cross our paths again, or you may even be able to continue an untangled relationship/friendship – depending on how debilitating your ending may have been. If you cannot verbalize it, you may want to think of the gratitude of the lessons of growth that were given to you. The main thing is that you have changed, whether they have or not, and you are on your own path becoming the person you were meant to be, as you know your preferences as you forge ahead.
Tags: Preferences
