Down in the Dumps?
Feel like everyday is a battle?
I feel you.
This is not about being Depressed or Sad, it is that feeling of Life being a wall that surrounds you, demanding that you constantly have to climb over it to participate in your own well being. This drains your energy and means that, when you do occasionally get on the other side, your motivation is already drained.
So, down in your hole it is dark, damp and full of life’s annoying problems. Very little light gets down there to brighten up your day. It is like waking up into eternal darkness every day.
Wow. We can never escape from that. Right? Here is a story to stir up your thoughts.
I have been there. The worst part of being stuck in a hole was that I dug it all by myself. No one forced me to look down. No one helped me to cover my eyes and ignore the sunlight. I picked up my spade and dug my way into all the things I could imagine that were stopping me from being content and comfortable.
Stuck in my hole I used language like, ‘if only I had…’ ‘at least…’ and ‘but I can’t because…’ These were like extra large shovels that helped me dig even deeper and faster. Progress was good, I made a very deep and dark hole to live in.
Outside my hole, the world kept turning. Only, everywhere I went my hole went with me. Moving around became hard, communication became very fuzzy. The effects were wide reaching and always negative. Sure, I laughed and did things that made me and others happy but I always remembered to check in with the progress of digging my dark hole and quickly forgot about the jolly time I was having…
Then I realised where I was. The hole was getting so large that I was spending nearly all my time MAINTAINING it. I put so much energy into digging, that now I had no time for anything else! So, maintenance requires good planning, there was no choice but to properly assess the extent of my hole and all the junk that I had built inside it. Down in the hole I couldn’t even see what was going on outside.
Time to take stock, pop my head up and look around with the question – is the world really the same as life here in my dark and gloomy hole?
I asked myself – what do I have out there?
Well, I have my partner who is there every morning when I wake up and every night when I got to bed. REGARDLESS of how I feel or how I act, the last words we exchange every day are I LOVE YOU.
I have my children, who smile at the very sound of my voice before they can even see me. Who I think about constantly even when I am not with them.
I have my dog, who is ALWAYS insanely happy to see me, even if I only left the room for a few minutes!
I have a house to live, food to eat, car to drive, garden to grow food in, books to read, friends to run with…The list went on and on.
I stacked all of these and even more things to one side on a massive pile, like a mountain. Of course, having spent so much time digging recently I was tired, so climbed up onto the pile and sat down.
Sitting high up on the massive mountain of all that I have in my life, I could feel the breeze and the sun. Breathing in the fresh air I thought, gosh it really is wonderful up here. Out of the corner of my eye I could see something, way down there, my hole.
How horrible and cold it looked!
Up here on the Mountain of my life I could not imagine why I would choose to go back down there. Looking around I could see so many other things, so much further than before when I was down in the darkness.
I felt so grateful.
Grateful for all the parts of my life that are REAL. That are there EVERYDAY regardless of what I think is going on. The emotions, the family and the connections that are the foundations of my life.
I am now going to sit on my mountain everyday.
The view is much better up here.
