let it be

Wednesday, 12/23/15, 2:47pm

Today is a fight. I am close to a deep hole, it's there, I am on the edge, and every so often I start slipping. I kick my legs as the dirt under them falls into the abyss and reach my arms up to grab a tree root, desperate to hold on. So far I've been able to grasp the root as Nasser is reaching down to help me.

I worry about people near and dear to me. If someone I love is having troubles in their life, I want to help, I want to pick up their troubles and shoulder them myself, but of course I can't. But I put these expectations on myself that I can help more, and I beat myself up for not helping enough. I do this with Adam (see Adam's story for details there); I do this with my friend who was going through a mental crisis; I do this about volunteering for things (as Nasser jokingly reminded me today). It's something I do. I guess it's probably something that's not uncommon when we look at it on a macro scale. We all want to control things, change people, fix problems that are not within our control. I don't know why we do this but it's something many of us are constantly working on.

It's not to say that trying to change and fix problems in the world is a bad thing. As a society, we wouldn't be able to progress if we didn't keep working towards the better and improved. But we have to healthfully notice where and when we don't have control.

Stephen Covey (most famous perhaps for his "7 Habits of Highly Effective People"), provided a good mindset to all this. Picture 2 concentric circles. The inner circle is our circle of control in our lives, stuff that we can directly control. That's pretty much just actions and choices we can personally make, right? Then outside that circle of control is the circle of influence. To me that's actions and choices we can make with regards to the people around us, which we may or may not indirectly influence. Beyond the circle of influence is everything else out of our control. Check out Stephen Covey here if you're interested in more (you may want to check this out yourself because I might be explaining this concept totally wrong). Anyway, it's important to understand that there are things and people and problems that may be within our circle of influence but not within our circle of control. And then we need to understand those things and people and problems that aren't even within our circle of influence. Hard to swallow, right? I don't want to think that there's things within my circle of influence (like Adam sometimes) that maybe are just completely out of my control and influence. Or at least sometimes. I don't know.

This is one of those days I need to come back to my blog later.

I'm finally back, hours later at 10:04pm. I think I'm safely at least a foot or two away from the edge now after some quality friends time, some video chat time with Audra in S. Korea, and playing board game time with said friends.

I don't feel like I have any conclusion to the entire discussion of circle of control vs circle of influence vs out of my control. Somehow I need to get to a point of acceptance on what I have control over. The rational part of my brain understands this quite well. But the emotional part? Not so much. It's hard to have my emotional side not agreeing with my rational side. Unfortunately this happens a lot though.

I tend to feel angry with myself sometimes or specifically the emotional part of me. The rational part of me gets how I shouldn't let things affect me or tells me that certain things are out of my control, and yet, the emotional side just ignores all of that. I also shouldn't be hating on my emotional side, but then it's hard not to when it so often takes me down a painful path.

We're going to call this blog done for today. Yeah, that's right, right here and right now. I could delve deeper into my issues, but right now it's actually just depressing me. And I don't want to fall down that hole. Again.

Coming up with my post title, I've spent awhile listening to and reading the dark, deep meaning of various Radiohead songs. But Nasser helped me with the suggestion of something much more optimistic.