This was my weekend to get some fresh air and enjoy our early spring. The scent of white lilacs and jasmine have been tempting me every morning and evening when their perfume is most potent--I didn't want to miss out so Saturday morning I pulled on my gardening clogs and gloves and set to pulling the thousands of weeds dotting our back yard.
I recently started limiting listening to books on tape or other media while I'm outside so I can be more alive to my experience and to be more aware of what is going on inside me mentally and emotionally. You would think that listening to a book would be absorbing but many times it's just convenient background noise while my own thoughts go wild and unchecked.
Often this wild, unchecked state goes deep in my personal bucket of hurts and resentments from the past. I don't know exactly why doing something as pleasant as spending time in the yard would bring anything up other than something nice but with disturbing regularity I have found myself emotionally traveling back to some earlier part of my life and reliving a confrontation or some other event that hurt my feelings. Only now, in the safe confines of my imagination, I'm armed with a comeback or some other action that feels like evening things up (like forcing my abuser's head into the toilet and flushing a few dozen times).
These memories powerful, seductive and are on rotation and ready to play when I find myself not paying attention to what I'm thinking.
There is no satisfaction in these rewritten memories but my body responds just as if these awful events were happening right now. I tense up, my face screwing into an angry glare which confuses everyone when I walk into the house ("what happened?" they all say as I stalk off to use the restroom or to get a glass of water--completely unaware that I'm radiating rage).
Without my earbuds in I became aware that this time my mind drifted to this one boss I had nearly 25 years ago. He was the husband part of a husband/wife run business--she ran everything and he spent his time bloviating and hurling abuse. He was a nasty bully and I was frequently on the receiving end of his tirades.
I was inexperienced and didn't know how to handle bullies like him at the time. His wife just laughed--and let him go on. From my point of view, I had very little power to change things. I just wanted to get out of there and away from him.
One day after months of looking I found a much better job quit without giving notice. Still, I never told him off--rationally I knew it wouldn't do any good but emotionally I never got the satisfaction of telling this jerk what I thought of him. Instead, I've spent many an afternoon in the intervening years on my imagined comebacks--comebacks that will never be delivered but reliably rile me up so much that I sometimes start muttering to myself (which only occasionally happens in front of other people--awkward).
Just as I was mentally winding up to psychically scream at the old gas bag, I caught myself--I was spending my fine jasmine scented morning chewing this rotten old bone--the opposite of what I intended for myself. I sat still for a while and just took in what my time traveling was costing me in lost time and serenity.
Could I break this habit of time traveling? Although it's tempting to replay these old hurts, they aren't part of my DNA. They also aren't making my life better. And above all, they are not representative of who I want to be in the world
And as simply as that, I let the old, hurtful thought go.
I took another deep breath and looked around. My orange tree was covered with blossoms. A single bud was uncurling on my peach tree. Delicate anise fronds poked through the soil here and there. Bees hovered over the blossoms of my black sage. The air hummed with the sound of electric garden tools and cars passing in the distance.
No old boss was to be seen anywhere. My breathing slowed. The day became exactly what I wished. No longer trapped by memory, I was free again.
Do you sometimes find yourself grousing over old hurts and grievances? I invite you to give yourself permission and see what it feels like to simply be present to what is right now.
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