The Heroine's Adventure

I wrote the following Guest Post for the blog, Lessons from the end of a marriage.  Please be sure to check out Lisa’s amazing journey and wise insights into marriage and divorce.  Thank you Lisa for the Guest Post!!

Recently, my husband and I were on a walk and I was in a rather silly mood.  I was being goofy and started doing funny walks, a moon walk (MJ I am not!), skipping, a penguin walk, and then I began walking like Sasquatch.  I was taking long slow deliberate steps and slowly moving my head side to side, just like in the famous video played on TV a million times over.  Later that evening, we went to see the new X-Men movie at the Drive-In (Yes, we have a Drive-In…so cool!) and in the movie, there was an awesome slow-motion scene.  All this slow-motion business caused me to think about how we live life…there is nothing slo-mo about it.

My life was a prime example of being quick to draw.  I would immediately judge every situation and circumstance, and react.  If my ex-husband sent me a not-so-nice email, I would quickly respond with a biting tongue.  It was my current husband who opened my eyes to my behavior.  I would show him my responses to my ex and he always told me that I needed to wait, calm down, and then respond.  My agitation would not help the situation but only add fuel to the fire.

I acted quickly in all situations of crisis.  I don’t like loose-ends, I want to be in control, and if someone upsets me I feel they need to know it.  I also feared “bad things” happening if I didn’t act fast enough to try and “fix” them.  Life can quickly become a series of reactions.  When that happens, we are no longer determining our path, we are letting circumstances dictate our life.  We become like a computer where somebody is pushing our buttons and we react.  The computer does not make the decisions, it only runs its program (your mind) and responds accordingly.

Aside from my Type A personality, there was a deeper reason to my quick emotional responses.  I have since figured out that when I am not living my truth, my path in life, every silly little thing around me becomes my life.  There is nothing else, I am not creating anything else, so I create distractions that appear meaningful.  When I am living and moving in a direction that is purposeful, all the little distractions have less meaning and power over me.  They become little bumps in the road, no more, no less.  I no longer allow them to veer me off down a dead end.

Life happens and at times it seems to spin out of control.  We try to match the pace to control it by making impulsive decisions.  Our responses are often based solely on emotions, such as fear, jealousy, anger, and hurt.  Sometimes no action is best but we do not allow ourselves a moment to ask, is this really important to me?  I have learned to sit back, allow myself to think and then react if necessary.  I try to not let fear or my Irish temper control what I do.  Fear has controlled me for most of my life.  I no longer want to run that program.  As silly as it sounds, I want to live life walking like Sasquatch.  We can all make more conscious moves.  We can watch the world spin around us and if we want to join in, we can, if not, we can keep moving.