Leaving Home.
Where do you live? It seems a simple question, yet the answer may be more difficult than you can imagine.
When patients in my office ask me where I live, I tell them the name of the city. When they ask where I’m from, I start with the country of my birth, and then explain where the town I was born in is. But for all of that geography, the answer is wrong.
We may reside in a place, but we actually live in our minds, and most especially in our ‘emotional home’.
Your emotional home is really the state of emotion that feels most normal to you, and which you are always trying to “get back to”. That instinct is so strong that it can distort how you see the world around you and how you interpret the actions of others.
Have you ever met that person who for some reason always finds a way to get angry? No matter how carefully you talk to them, how much effort you put into not upsetting them, they find something to interpret as a personal affront, and find a way to the anger in which they live.
Likewise there are some people who live in guilt. They may be the kindest, sweetest people who try their hardest to not upset anyone, yet they walk around with a profound feeling of having done something wrong in their lives. They feel a deep sense of guilt which they cannot explain, and they spend each day afraid to fully express themselves for fear of ‘being wrong’.
For many years, I lived at the corner of blame and victimhood.
Convinced that I had been wronged by the universe in some way, I searched all of reality for ‘truths’ to validate my residence. Once I found those ‘truths’ I would inevitably find someone to blame for it. I had all my reasons worked out, and my beliefs that in turn justified my behaviors.
Over time, I came to realize that I could stay forever at the corner of blame and victimhood, but the rent was increasingly becoming more expensive.
Each year I lived there, I was paying more of my time into a house that would never bring me joy, and would eventually crumble around me, after I had sacrificed so much of what could have been looking for something that was never going to be.
So I decided it was time to leave home. That move was larger than the 4,902 miles that I now live from where I grew up.
Leaving the corner of blame and victimhood, I sought a new address, in the neighborhood that had sprung up at the intersection of responsibility and kindness. I found the rent to be more expensive at first, but the more I put into that home, the less it seemed to cost me.
As I paid in action, which I had previously deemed pointless, I received the wages of self respect. As I invested in humility and humanity, I acquired the interest of joy, balance and peace.
And I found that my new home was a much better place to be.
Today, I invite you to see where you really live, and consider if it’s time for you to move out, and move on. While the journey may seem difficult, the destination may be more wonderful than you can imagine.
-- Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings