We used to do a lot of living, lately it feels that we are mostly just surviving. Don’t get me wrong, surviving is better than not surviving, but I long for living.
Recently I came across a great podcast “Where should we begin? With Esther Perel featuring a young family coming to terms with a diagnosis of early onset Parkinson’s. I could relate to the struggles of the wife who does “all the emotional work”. She does it in order to protect her family and her husband, who is the diagnosed one. I find myself doing the emotional work too. I do it without thinking about it, but by doing it I deny my husband the opportunity to grow and learn to express his emotions.
So there is the food for thought. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
You know when you are just surviving when you refuse to think about future. When you find being excluded from other people’s plans, because they want to protect you. In the past I would feel excluded, but I no longer judge the intentions of others. None of us knows the demons other people are struggling with, they don’t tend to end up on Facebook and Instagram. So I tend to just leave these incidents with “they had their reasons”.
You know that you are surviving when joy is seldom felt.
I long for living again, but it feels like every time I try I’m faced with the “…but I can’t because”. Very few things are left that don’t elicit this kind of response. And in order to learn the new way of living amongst the surviving we have to find what we can do.
Today we went for a wonderful walk along the bay. We ended up thinking about what we can do. The fresh ocean air and sun gave us energy to muse about riding this trail next year on our bikes, with Mr T in the trailer.
I’m sure we can learn to do living amongst the surviving we have to do.
ktojoy 