I don’t have the head space for anything serious right now. All I have to write about are the ridiculous things I think about when I’m not being serious, so I guess I’ll post that.
I was watching my soap opera last night and it occurred to me, I never see anyone on a soap really holding on to their problems. Of course, that might be because they have so many new problems coming up all the time, who has time for the old ones — but that doesn’t make them unique. I have problems coming up all the time too.
My life could be a soap opera — of a particularly dark and depressing variety.
But one clear difference between me and the people on the soaps is, they don’t carry yesterday’s problems forward to make a bigger problem for today.
Tonight, Chelsea doesn’t want her boyfriend coming with her to visit her mom. Is that because Chelsea is remembering that, the last time mommy saw this boy, he wasn’t Chelsea’s boyfriend… he was an accomplice after the fact to Chelsea’s commission of manslaughter? Is she afraid that mommy will disapprove?
(That would be what I was worried about!)
But no… Chelsea and her boyfriend both seem to have entirely forgotten about those dark days when there was a body hidden in the sorority basement and the law was breathing down their necks. For them, today’s problem is all about today.
Now, I don’t normally see anything worth learning in a soap opera, but this particular observation got me thinking.
Obviously there are plenty of things I can’t leave behind so easily (or at all). My past drags on my every present step like a weighted chain. There are memories and conditioning and programming of which I will never be free until I do the work required to make it happen.
But there are also plenty of other things that I hold on to more voluntarily — and completely unnecessarily.
For example, the thousand and one examples of my social ineptitude, starting at about age 5 and accumulating through the 30+ years since then. I don’t even remember the earliest examples of this, except as anecdotes that my mother helpfully repeats at family dinners, but even the ones I don’t remember can become clubs with which I batter my own confidence and self-esteem… assuming I have the temerity to develop any. Or else they are just very effective factors in preventing me from developing them.
And that’s just one example, among the many other unnecessary thoughts, feelings, and memories I collect like an emotional packrat.
And the question is — why? Why do I cling so tightly to these absolutely useless feelings and reactions? I’m not gaining anything from them, I’m not benefitting from them… at best, they make me feel bitter and frustrated and resentful without being able to do anything about it, and at worst, they are means to cause myself a little extra hurt and damage.
So why do I hold on to them? Why are they so hard to let go of?
I really don’t know the answers to those questions — but I do know that I would be better off if I could let go of them — or better yet, if I had never picked them up to hold on to in the first place. Like Chelsea and her guy, it would be better to leave yesterday’s mistakes behind instead of carrying every single one of them forward into today. In this instance (if in no other), I might actually benefit by learning a lesson from the soaps.
