“Your sadness, your loneliness, your fear, and your anxiety are not mistakes. They are not obstacles on your path. They are your path.” Matt Licata, Lifted from Bill Britton
What if being manic depressive is as much a gift as it is a curse? What if bouts of self-loathing get transformed into stretches of self-affirmation?
Today’s Troubles Are Tomorrow’s Promise
Maybe the better question is… What if I am who I am today because of the psychological and emotional troubles I have encountered in the last seven decades? When the writer of the quote above refers to sadness, loneliness, fear, and anxiety, it’s like he is reading my playbook. Yikes! I’ve lived with these guys more than 70 years! We’ve become friends.
When you first read the words sad, lonely, fearful, and anxious your thoughts are immediately something like, “OMG. How awful it must be.”
To Be Human
Well. A couple things come to mind: First, isn’t that simply the emotional state of most Americans? Especially younger ones? Now that is indeed awful. However, what also comes to mind is… human beings, in the image of God, are resilient and creative. We work our way out of bad stuff. We turn sadness into humility, loneliness into contemplative solitude, fear into opportunity, and anxiety into confidence.
Because, if we don’t, we die. We may be born to die, but we are not born to like it. So, we fight the fight in whatever ways we can. Sometimes whole-heartedly and other times with a wee bit of desperation.
It’s Your Decision
It was just last week that I made an important personal decision. I am committing to not being so hard on myself (and others) and to look at the rest of my life more optimistically. We are unwilling magnets in a world system of heavy metal pessimism, cynicism, and social outrage. Such thinking feeds our self-doubting demons of sadness, loneliness, fear, and anxiety. And, without resilience courage and creativity we are prey to the beast (both from without and from within).
For me, the choice is necessary. I choose humility, solitude, opportunity, and confidence over the four opposites.
Maybe most important, I have realized that this is not a new response. Choosing courage and resiliency and learning have been my go-to’s for years. And most likely, yours as well. If not, tomorrow still awaits the transformed you!
Life is a Journey
Of Unexpected Pathways
Photo courtesy of NiseriN at istockphoto
