Listen, I know my tenses are a mess here. It's all good.
How did we end up this way? Somewhere along the way, the idea that I could outthink problems, attain perfection, or just make the very best choices ever by finding the perfect answer got into my brain. Maybe it was due to earlier mistakes and my desire to avoid future mistakes. Maybe it was due to a critical upbringing which ingrained a tough inner critic and again the need to avoid mistakes. Maybe it is due to poor social skills and knowing I can't talk my way in and out of things, so I better get it all controlled and figured out beforehand.
Naturally none of those work well. While foresight is a great gift-it is not perfect or infallible-because the world, and other people, are not entirely predictable. I have been so wrong so many times. I have read too much into things, or rather MISREAD too much into things. I too often think people are on the same page as me when they are actually upholding the status quo and just getting information from me. Sometimes I have even seen it happening, and yet, didn't want to believe. Nothing's going on now. I am just frustrated with my intellectual failings. Sometimes I think too much of my abilities-or rather my ability to improvise and gather what I need to know quickly about something - and sound knowledgeable. But sounding knowledgeable and being knowledgeable or even INTERESTED are different things. Does everyone do this? Granted, I have no problem saying, "I don't know." The problem is, sometimes we don't know how little we know. And then when confronted with a task, we discover, we don't even care about that which we thought we knew. I don't know why I am saying we. Maybe it's just me.
All my driving time in the car gives me so much time to think. And I think a huge part of my adult struggles has always been trying to manage anxiety. I was always trying to preemptively strike at something that could hurt me; Always trying to control my world so I felt secure. I think that is why I feel the need to be respected. To me, it means safety. But grasping for respect is so...small. To be large, you have to break outside your head. You have to be expansive and work outward. You have to look beyond what you want to what the world around you needs. It's such a mind shift. It is such a hard habit to create.
So my instinct is to scan for flaws. If I can find and fix the flaws, all will be well. But that isn't how it works. I don't have to be perfectly happy with every detail to be content and rest in my world. I always want to keep moving, to keep searching. But sometimes, what one needs to do is to be still. To build. To bloom. It's hard to be still. To stay in one place and grow up and out, when your whole being is sending tendrils of vine out into the world to find somewhere else. Perhaps we don't jump ship on a tendril. Perhaps a tendril is the networking. Perhaps it needs to strengthen and deepen its own roots before I can transplant. Perhaps it is all okay.
