The default position
I’ve been grappling with the default on all my preferences with my new computer. Everything including my iPhoto defaults to someone’s idea of the best way to set it up, not mine. The other day I was in a restorative yoga meditation class and Aaron was speaking about the default position and we lay on our backs for one hour running a diagnostic test on our body from tippy toes to top of head – it took a full hour – and in that hour we were checking out what our default position is – how we have become programmed to react to certain things and people.
I’m here to say that the default button can be changed, but it takes a lot of work. And sometimes it seems like life is a lot of work – how to deal with stress, how to deal with loss, how to deal with relationships, how to deal with toddlers throwing trumpets, how to deal with dogs acting aggressively, how to deal with cats clawing their way through your household and furniture, how to deal with just about everything. For everything we have a default position but that doesn’t necessarily serve us.
I received a text message from my sister the other day and I chose to ignore it. But then I veered to a higher calling and tried to do what my mother would want me to do and that is respond, so I did. And the next text message she sent was a reminder that I murdered my mother and she asked, “how could I live with myself?” So I defaulted to me and responded to the rant in Rachel speak, “Easy,” I text back.
We are our default button. But the truth is we possess the ability to change our programming – we just have to decide for each event if it is worth it to work passed default into a more evolved response – in this case, it wasn’t.