Feeling is Feeding

A short while back I lost a friend.  In the midst of a conversation, I said something that offended the friend and he decided to withdraw from my life.  I hadn't intended to offend him.  When I found out I had offended him, I had no idea what I could have possibly said that had offended him.  Interestingly enough, that same individual had previously, by only a week or two, asked if I was a doormat who was afraid to offend people.

Now, you can't change other people.  Nor should you want to.  Hey, I've been nearly as damaged as the best of ya.  Let me tell you in YOUR language.

Anybody you actually changed wouldn't be there because THEY chose to be.  So, if you made them love you, they did it because you made them.  That will never be worth the same to you as it would if they had gotten there under their own steam.  Deep deep down, you know it was never right anyway.  It's just the rejection.  Feels like you have something to prove.  You don't.  Why would you want to hang around with someone who had no sense of humor anyway?  Move on.

Once, my concern about the friend would have been about offending him.  He chose to get offended and just as it hadn't to him, the fact that I had no malice in my heart wouldn't matter to me.  It does now.  If I'm stupid and put my foot in it, I'm sorry.  I'm a human and I'll do that once and again.  Even if it is dreaded "emotions" involved.  We're human and as Eckhart Tolle would put it, occasionally we're asleep.  I will be.  You will be.  I'll excuse your farts if you excuse mine.  We're good, so long as nobody chooses to just stay there.  So the fact that my heart had no malice is everything to me.

Nowadays when something like this happens, I want to learn from it.   What does the Universe have for me to learn from this experience?  There just isn't enough data input from my side of the table.  To learn something I have to try and experience it from his.

Ok so he came to see me.  I was at work so he couldn't have had any baggage about me having been supposed to go see him.  Check.  I said something during that exchange that upset him.  I don't remember the conversation that well, but I do remember that I never called him a name or said anything overtly insulting.  OK, so I had to have said something insulting during the conversation, probably during the more personal bits.  Well, we talked about his sister and his girlfriend.  He knows I don't know his sister and he knows I am friends with and like his girlfriend.  So somewhere in there I said something so offensive he chose to take it to heart and not be my friend?

What can I learn from that?

If you remember my earlier claim, I've been just as damaged as the best of ya.  So I've been just as damaged as that.  I can remember when someone doing something as simple as looking at their watch translated as "Is it time to go now?"  Which translated as him/her being tired of my company and wanted to be gone.  Which I found offensive.  I never was as offended as my former friend, but I was offended.

By someone looking at their watch.

It sounds so ridiculous to me now.  But I'll tell you a secret.  Sometimes I'll see the trigger, and the thought is still there.  No emotion and I can laugh it off.  But it is there.  I'm hoping it will go away someday.  That nagging stench of unworthiness.  After all, I used to know how it felt to throw a complete hissy fit.  The vein surging thrill of really letting your anger fly.  Stiff and tall like a Greek or Roman Goddess.  I don't anymore.  I can describe the feeling.  I remember feeling it.  I just can't relate.  Now if I feel the slap of anger, it is incidental only.  If I feel any following negative emotions, they've line-jumped to sadness about my unworthiness.

I can't say that's how it happens with everybody, but that's how it happened with me.  Before, if unworthiness got triggered, I had no idea and I got angry.  Sometimes monumentally angry.  I never stayed angry long, though.  I was like a firecracker going off only to immediate dissipate.  Usually into tears.  After I found out about my subconscious feelings of unworthiness?  It really became something hard to get angry about.  It's like watching a magician who has showed me how he does the trick and I can't un-see it again for enjoyment's sake.  It's funny, I've planned to say it does still make me sad, but trying to type it right now, it sounds a bit ridiculous.

Perhaps I will be very happy I wrote this blog.

Anyway, I've done my own bit of time, looking to be offended.  I know about that.  I know a lot of new things now that I didn't know then.

As Eckhart Tolle would put it, "the pain body," which is exactly what that is, "wants to be fed."  Simply having someone smash your emotional thumb isn't satisfying enough.  It has to sucker punch you with every negative thought it can throw.  Recovery time from the initial incident is very small.  Recovery time from a full out hissy fit can be years.  Meanwhile, you think you are only acting naturally.  X happened so you're entitled to be Y.  Sorry, I've realized it's a choice.

I want to be happy and on a very simplistic level I've realized I can't have that if I'm choosing to be angry.  Think of it this way.  Your favorite song comes on the radio.  You get angry at another driver.  You don't hear the music again until 3 songs later.  Anger robs you of time and the things you love and enjoy.

Most importantly, I learned about the Law of Attraction.  I can wish and hope to attract all the love and happiness I want, but I am going to get what I am, not what I want.  I am going to get what I give.

Feeling is feeding.  Feed want you want and starve what you don't.