I was recently talking to someone who was struggling to come to terms with a friend of hers leaving to join the army. The back story is that her best friend of 17 years had been living with an ex for 6 months due to financial constraints, and as a way out had decided to join the army and leave for 4 years with possible deployment oversees.
Apparently she would never have done this if she wasn’t stuck in this bad living situation, but has now become excited at the prospect of new beginnings.
The person I was talking to, let’s call her Elaine for the purposes of this post, was feeling angry and sad about her friend leaving, especially because she’d be leaving to potentially be part of a conflict and could find herself in great danger.
Although Elaine was being outwardly supportive of her friend, she was dreading her departure, and the thought of potentially losing their close friendship and had a lot of anger which was directed at her friends ex for putting her in this situation.
Elaine had a couple serious “are you sure?” conversations with her friend who had indicated that she was sure of her decision, and it being what she wanted.
If Elaine’s friend stays she will continue to work at her solid full time job, and will only have to keep living with her ex for another two months.
I told her the bottom line was she should let go of her attachment to their friendship and accept the situation as is, which involves both letting go, and surrendering to the present reality.
She shouldn’t resist the feelings she has. Instead examine her fear of loss by looking into it.
Bringing awareness to her story telling, by asking how much of it is speculation driven by fear, which is all of it, in reality. I told Elaine to be aware of this, and the fact that none of these thoughts are real, they are story telling embellishments out of control.
The truth is her friend is happy to go, so she should be happy for her. None of us know what the future holds, her friend could stay and get hit by a bus, and then Elaine would be thinking she should have let her friend go into the army after all, instead of talking her out of it. You can make stories up to either back her friends departure or for staying.
I advised Elaine to let go of the fear that is telling her that her friend is safer here rather than there. It’s her friends journey and she needs to go where she needs to go. We all have our own journey to travel.
We are all protective of those we love, we want them to be safe and secure, and when they are not with us we believe the danger is greater or that we may be left without them. This is of course a possibility, but we can drive ourselves crazy by running with these stories.
Loss is indeed part of life, all things are transient. Change is continuous and wishing for it not to be, does little to change the reality.
We should be grateful for the blessings we have, as they are happening, for the relationships, the places and the things we get to experience, in the moment we experience them. Instead of being completely absorbed by wanting, and chasing after more or better in the future, which many of us do, and are preoccupied with doing, only to realising what we had, but didn’t truly appreciate when we had them to enjoy. Nothing lasts forever, everything has it’s time and is subject to change, continually.
Accept the fact that change is part of life, be grateful for your blessings right now, and get used to the idea that the future is uncertain, but focus much more on the opportunities it can present, rather than the danger, and risk that it may or may not pose.
The best solution is not to over think, but instead feel life in the moment it unfolds, in the present moment. Thinking is imagination, speculation, with no foundation in reality. It’s the creative story teller inside you, driven by fear. Love is now, fear is focused in the future. Appreciate all you have now. It’s fine to work towards a future goal, but prioritise NOW, and all that is in your now, because it might not be there tomorrow.
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