Choosing the Meaning of Events
It has been quite some time since I had the luxury of posting here. In the busy months since my last activity, I have been working so hard. I guess that means I’ve been creating prosperity. But at the same time, it feels like an important avenue of prosperity has been choked off. Well, it appears that way from one perspective. But I’ve observed more than once in this life that things that initially appear bleak, can turn out to be greater blessings than you’d ever imagine.
So we make meaning from it all and that is the meaning I choose to take from recent developments.
I have noticed in my thoughts, a theme that seems to have been running for most of my adult life, if not also during my childhood years. It is a theme of self-sufficiency and making an abundant life our of very little material wealth.
I wonder if these types of thoughts didn’t come from living in such a chaotic family–so much trauma, so much drama. When I was about 10 years old, I would lock myself in the bathroom, lock myself away from all the yelling and fighting that always seeemed to be going on in the household. I often thought I could just take refuge there forever and have everything I needed. I thought I’d put bedding and food in the linen cabinet and a few books on the back of the toilet. I’d sleep in the tub at night, bathe in the morning, have meals on the countertop and never be bothered by the others in the household again. What strange thoughts for a 10 year old. I just wanted to be left alone. That meager existence to me was freedom and abundance.
So now, when a simpler life has seemingly been forced on us, in some ways it feels like an opportunity to create a more peaceful, simpler, yet more abundant future. I see before me all sorts of ways I would like to express the excitement and surge of creativity I feel towards sharing this life I am creating. And suddenly it feels better to be sharing it. But I also wonder if this underlying theme in my thoughts that has been there most of my life, didn’t greatly contribute to this new situation which some would view as a life of austerity.
I think whether you see the situation as austere or as an opportunity for greater freedom and more creativity depends on how well your basic needs are met. I know there are some whose basic needs are not met. I wonder what kinds of opportunities they are able to see in the situation, if any.
I do know many families are joining households. Who knows how it will all unfold.
