I have written and rewritten this post a few times, namely because the writing process involved for it has consisted largely of me being excessively hungry and/or bitchy and in the mood to vent, rather than reason out concepts sloshing around in my skull.
In relation to a post I made while I was in Paris last, in which I wrote of learning how to chill, entailing learning to meditate on the go and taking a step back from the minutiae of things that consistently bother me or are a source of stress, I have come to find the process impactful on my social life, which recently has taken something of a nosedive for various reasons which are not important for elaboration on this blog. Whether it's dealing with exes, dealing with those in a precariously undefined middle ground, dealing with friction with others in day to day life, dealing with changes in nascent friendships, dealing with the unreliability of others, or simply dealing with not feeling satisfied socially, the main lesson I have drawn out of recent months has been to move along and figure out how to let go of preconceptions or attachments to things I would normally find very difficult. Perhaps I'm writing more and more about personal subjects of late, but these are the most pressing things in my headspace, as would naturally occur when you take a few months of a breather to regroup yourself and get ready for whatever the next phase of life has in store.
So as it comes along, the universe has thrown a bevy of increasingly negative social situations at me rather consistently for several months, things I can't deal with by running away from them, and things that are not necessarily in my hands to influence. The only option is to disengage and understand that sometimes taking a deep breath and letting go of my attachments to certain ideals, people, or engagements is the only way to ensure that I don't end up in the psych ward. It's been one of those awakening moments in which I have realized that for as organized, rational, clear, or logical I may feel as though I'm being, sometimes that is simply not enough to make another person come around to my point of view, that some people are never going to, and that the implications that may have on my conception of the future are not as earth-shattering as they seem when they are being dragged along for months on end. Once you get to the point at which differences become obstacles, there is no sense in trying to turn them into the vehicles for growth and personal expansion that they may once have been. Even with others less familiar, those sources of common daily frustrations or needless stress be it from passive aggression or conflicts of personality, the same principle holds. Some hills are just not meant to be climbed.
For as obvious and cliched and reminiscent of the self-help industry as this all seems, the lesson is much harder to learn and apply in practice than it is to write out or give as advice to your friend who has just spent the whole time talking to you about their problems, letting their coffee go cold in the process. I have moments in which I wonder to what extent it was useful or necessary to extract myself from a social environment in which I at least had the advantage of having close ties to fall back on when loose ends fell to the wayside or when things got difficult from more significant others, or what I'm doing to make of experiences if not to share them with the people who are supposed to be there around me. For as much as progressive types, and especially those in the mental health industry, talk of process, that is exactly what the adjustment to change is. Problems don't go away just because you've meditated once, and good days are paired with equally challenging ones. I suppose what I'm getting at in this whole thing is that I seem to have learned how to navigate that course without completely drowning in it in the process. Letting go is an art form.
In relation to a post I made while I was in Paris last, in which I wrote of learning how to chill, entailing learning to meditate on the go and taking a step back from the minutiae of things that consistently bother me or are a source of stress, I have come to find the process impactful on my social life, which recently has taken something of a nosedive for various reasons which are not important for elaboration on this blog. Whether it's dealing with exes, dealing with those in a precariously undefined middle ground, dealing with friction with others in day to day life, dealing with changes in nascent friendships, dealing with the unreliability of others, or simply dealing with not feeling satisfied socially, the main lesson I have drawn out of recent months has been to move along and figure out how to let go of preconceptions or attachments to things I would normally find very difficult. Perhaps I'm writing more and more about personal subjects of late, but these are the most pressing things in my headspace, as would naturally occur when you take a few months of a breather to regroup yourself and get ready for whatever the next phase of life has in store.
So as it comes along, the universe has thrown a bevy of increasingly negative social situations at me rather consistently for several months, things I can't deal with by running away from them, and things that are not necessarily in my hands to influence. The only option is to disengage and understand that sometimes taking a deep breath and letting go of my attachments to certain ideals, people, or engagements is the only way to ensure that I don't end up in the psych ward. It's been one of those awakening moments in which I have realized that for as organized, rational, clear, or logical I may feel as though I'm being, sometimes that is simply not enough to make another person come around to my point of view, that some people are never going to, and that the implications that may have on my conception of the future are not as earth-shattering as they seem when they are being dragged along for months on end. Once you get to the point at which differences become obstacles, there is no sense in trying to turn them into the vehicles for growth and personal expansion that they may once have been. Even with others less familiar, those sources of common daily frustrations or needless stress be it from passive aggression or conflicts of personality, the same principle holds. Some hills are just not meant to be climbed.
For as obvious and cliched and reminiscent of the self-help industry as this all seems, the lesson is much harder to learn and apply in practice than it is to write out or give as advice to your friend who has just spent the whole time talking to you about their problems, letting their coffee go cold in the process. I have moments in which I wonder to what extent it was useful or necessary to extract myself from a social environment in which I at least had the advantage of having close ties to fall back on when loose ends fell to the wayside or when things got difficult from more significant others, or what I'm doing to make of experiences if not to share them with the people who are supposed to be there around me. For as much as progressive types, and especially those in the mental health industry, talk of process, that is exactly what the adjustment to change is. Problems don't go away just because you've meditated once, and good days are paired with equally challenging ones. I suppose what I'm getting at in this whole thing is that I seem to have learned how to navigate that course without completely drowning in it in the process. Letting go is an art form.
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