January 5, 2010

END EXCUSES
I had a dream in which my husband lay dead on the floor. When I awoke, I was very much upset. Then I went into denial and decided that the fact that he was lying dead on the floor could not happen, as I reasoned to myself, people die in bed. Just in case this should happen, I thought all day about how I would manage without a husband, should it occur. I went through my finances and social life possibilities and concurred that I could survive. Then I forgot about the dream, for over a year, which I had written down so that if it occurred I would know it was a psychic dream.

When I walked into the kitchen one night after I completed my counseling sessions, I discovered a purple skinned husband lying very dead on the floor. I've written about this before and how I went into shock which lasted seventeen years. (See Shock article).

Not only did the dream help me prepare for the consequences of widowhood, but it also helped me cope. I did not live in dread for the year intervening the dream. I planned my struggle and then rested on the knowledge that I had prepared myself the best that I could. I did not need to fester over it, which if I had, would have left me too emotionally weak to deal with the actual event.

I was pondering some of Dr. Wayne Dyer’s excuse list that he states keeps us from being happy: (specifically “I”M NOT STRONG ENOUGH” , “IT WILL BE DIFFICULT” and “I’M TOO SCARRED”). I recalled that people cling to such excuses which make them miserable and yet hang on as if they were their protection blanket. When instead excuses have thorns that rake the person daily. Even when given an alternate way to view life, many people hang on to the old torments.

It is amazing to me that one would rather suffer daily the slings and arrows of defeat to ready oneself for the possible death blow of trouble. In fact, all that pain is often wasted because the agony never arrives. Even when it does materialize it often is not comparable to the pain that the person has already put him/herself through. Or if it does hit the millionth meter of suffering, that, ridding oneself of the excuse of being fearful, one now has the energy to execute a plan to reorganize one’s life. The fear of suffering can be modified by accepting the grief as a given in life. The grief is still there, but it is not magnified by the fear established by excuses.