Adjusting your perspective
I’ve been in the woe stage of life on account of Arlene. Today, I went to yoga and Michelle was back – she’s like some rock star yogi – just awesome. She had just gotten back from a retreat in the Bahamas with 50 others who were mostly studying or were already monks.
What she talked about today is the lens we use to evaluate people, things, events and how we filter it through our mind and depending on where our mind is at the moment, we might filter negative, or positive.
It was a good lesson for the day as well as a hard and challenging yoga practice.
A lot of people have been talking to me lately about their woes and I know I must be attracting that kind of talk as my heart is heavy. But today, I was listening to my friend who lost her daughter and her perspective was too much in the negative direction and so I wrote to her about perspective – about her cup half full.
I wanted to have a second line for Arlene but I don’t think I can do it tomorrow. Maybe when I get her ashes, I can scatter them in her favorite places and then think about a celebration of her life in my life. Then I might have better perspective.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Perhaps your phrasing of the woe discussion came out somewhat differently than you intended and differently than your actual discussion with your friend, but if I were your friend who lost her daughter, I’m not sure I would ever talk to you again. First, I think categorizing her discussion with you about the loss as one of “a lot of people” talking to you about their “woes” belittles it tremendously. And second, it seems rather shockingly presumptuous to judge her “perspective” and direct her that her cup is half full. I would imagine that, no matter what else is in her life, her cup is not half full. Her cup has probably pretty much turned into an abyss that won’t have a bottom for a pretty long time. As I said, perhaps this was simply a not-quite-thought-out entry, in which case it seemed you might want to be aware of how it comes across.
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Well she has two beautiful children and a wonderful husband as well as a supporting and loving family. She suffered an insurmountable loss of a child that was born with a genetic disorder who would have grown up to be an adult vegetable and who sadly died young. It’s horrifying. No one dismisses that. I think you don’t know the whole circumstances very well or through reading my entry. Her therapist has been pointing her to look at the half full cup because she has a lot of positive pulls and needs some perspective.