The Quaity of Our Lives

"The quality of our lives comes down to the quality of our choices.  If we accept responsibility for the quality of our choices, nothing can stop us.  If we always blame the world, nothing will move us.  The degree to which we accept responsibility is the degree to which we can move our lives forward, gain perspective, humility and joy." - Dr. David Lieberman

There is a lot of talk in my office about shame.  About blame.  About whose fault things are.  Not just in our relationships with others, but in our relationship with ourselves.  There is a lot of confusion, on both a spiritual/psychic level and a physical/external level about what causes what, what influences what, or who, and how, and to what extent.  Why do we think the way do?  React the way do?  What shapes us?  Why are we "shape-able" to begin with.  And whose job is it to work on things? To tend to the dynamics of things.  To care for us, to take care of our feelings, our needs, our desires.  What exactly is our responsibility?  And our ability?And our capability? What are we aiming for?  What do we need? Why do we need it?

Okay, lots of good questions.  Overwhelming questions sometimes, depending on how we are addressing them, if we are even willing to or interested in addressing them.  And of course when we are in emotional pain, or we don't have, or don't believe we have, the things that we need, or long for, or want, these questions take a back seat.  We often don't even want to know about them.  But that does not mean that they are not there.  That they are not bubbling quietly underneath the surface, quietly niggling at us.

I think that when we are afraid to notice them we stay stuck in what we think is shame, or laziness, or fear.  And when they become part of our consciousness, even when we don't have quick or easy answers, relief starts to flood in.  We somehow find ourselves tooling around in the solutions instead of wallowing around in the problems.  If we are pointed toward looking not only at the external circumstances, but also at our deeper questions, we see that things get better.  That tending to the internal and external together often goes hand in hand toward better feelings about ourselves that are genuine and lasting, and not built on distraction, avoidance and auto-pilot.  There is a feeling of movement and self acknowledgement that we can access that erases the shame, the blame and the anxiety, and points us toward something much, much, better.

photo credit:
© Dawn Hudson | Dreamstime Stock Photos