My return reply to Scottishmomus’s bullshite-and-empathy
It is very simple Anne Marie, and also quite profound. You have been brought up to be a caring, loving person. Simply because that was what you were shown or its your reaction to what you felt was the opposite of that, being brought up by those you love (sometimes mum, sometimes dad, or both), who you feel have treated you rather poorly and so you try to compensate for that.
And then we project what we are out into the world. You want the world to be a caring, beautiful place…but along comes those that (and as the song says), ‘shat’ on everything they touch and practically force you to live in it.
Your life steps into what it loves to do, teaching, caring, showing and even writing that what you express deep within.
The kids, even though they can be quite draining, leave you with a hope that they have heard you. Will grow up into a world with at least your empathy and care so that you can feel you have achieved something by giving them a start in this world. And they do the one thing in your ‘communicating’ that is an absolute must, it is the other half of communicating and probably the most important bit…is that they ‘listen’.
But here’s the 1st rub, ‘they’, as in those that like to ‘shat’ everywhere…don’t ‘care’ like you do, won’t ‘listen’ to anyone like you, will not ‘try’ like you do…simply because they have not been ‘taught’ as you have or are reacting to their upbringing. In fact, that pride of the world, that thing they call governments etc only attract one type of person…the controller, manipulator…to achieve only one end, to become everything for everybody while feathering their own nest. Every person that I know does not trust them because of that falseness. It is an instant signal they show that puts us on guard…they smile.
The 2nd rub is also very simple, they have been allowed to set up this ‘government’ in a way that they imply your absolute right to make choices by voting. And as soon as you do they then counter that by ‘party lines’ and ‘your choice’ has to follow those lines, even if they are the most honest person in the world. The system is corrupt and I don’t mean just the feathering the nest, I mean morally it is a cesspit.
So you are in fact beating your head against a wall, splattering your hard built sanity into a void of idiots that have absolutely no idea how to apply ’empathy’ because they fear it. They have been brought up in such a way that they wall it up and block its appearance, the exact opposite of you, and focus on ‘their’ ideas.
The only way to ‘live’ in this environment is to come from where your heart is. But to do this you have to let go all of ‘their’ stuff. Just focus on what you believe and give it out. Ignore where they are at…totally. Just give you out to those that want to listen.
And the reason that they win all the time is simply because they browbeat you into submission, screaming and yelling absolute garbage to drown out something that they are afraid of. The only thing that will beat this system is to run for a position that will do one thing and one thing only. Allow the people to have a direct say on decisions that go through parliament, whether by computer once a year on the main topics (that must be stuck by like a referendum). Which can only ever be changed by putting it out to a referendum.
And trust me, the howls from those parliamentarians would be heard from around the world, you would be removing the one thing that keeps that control in their pockets. The money ‘outside’ would no longer have anyone to corrupt to get through their needs and wants (they can’t pay off us millions of people). Hey, for me even suggesting such a thing I might suddenly disappear they are that afraid of this.
Now some sanity. And this can be a little confronting my friend. Those fears that we hold (and I mean all of us), are the very things that drive us in all that we do.
An example: (and I make a great crash test dummy here 🙂 ). I hated my father because I thought he didn’t love me. Fullstop. (I, and everybody else in their own way, lock in whatever their fears are by about 8 or 9 years old. This you can find in all the text books).
I thought I was unlovable so to compensate for that, and in all my relationships I wanted my partner to show that love, I expected them to respond to my overtures (pull out chairs, give flowers and poetry etc), so that I could feel that love…but all it ever did was reach a point that they felt smothered and pushed me away. I had in fact ‘created’ my fear. And we all do it. We ‘project’ our fear by trying to not have it happen.
I had spent most of my life ‘projecting’ because I knew it was everybody else’s fault. How could it be mine with all that I was doing. And this is what we all do in our own ways.
In your case you know you have a great idea, it is fair and gives a real opportunity to everyone to be part of something wonderful. But your great idea for everyone does what my wanting love (also my version), does for me. It puts a lot of people ‘against’ what I am after because it also presses their ‘fear’ buttons.
Now the hard bit, I’m asking you to find that bit in your life that keeps upsetting you. All the ways you feel that you have been treated badly and upsets you more than anything. And this will be in all your relationships, mum, dad, partner, your children and maybe even especially those children you teach.
Your trying to give something but you are not being heard, trying to show something but are being ignored, trying to help but are being shunted, pushed, and relegated to the background.
Which part upsets you, what relationships reject who you are. In there is your answer. That very rejection is the very thing that drains you. You are trying to give from who you are but what you are giving is being shunned. That very thing you are trying to give is that inner core of who you are, it is the love you have built forever and it is being rejected. It is upsetting, it is painful, it is very distressing because you have opened your heart to share something that you ‘know’, and it is given with that love. But to have that ‘love’ slapped back in your face is a shock.
And the drain goes on. While ever our fear is with us, we will always react the same way. It is something that we have anchored into who we are. And each time it rears its head we go on the defensive and it drags us downward some more.
A second thing I will mention here is we are all nervous when we try something new, it is natural to be fearful of ‘new’ circumstances, it is a safety mechanism so we don’t do anything dangerous. So new job, new adventure, new relationship…we tend to be on guard until we get our answers to the circumstance and this allows us to relax, be at ease and no longer worry about that circumstance. It becomes second nature so we no longer give it any thought.
But our life fears have had no answer for years and years, we don’t understand the ‘why’ simply because they were locked into place by a very immature, childish emotional mind. And the only way that mind could operate was to block that horrible fear, put up that wall so that we had a coping mechanism in place to handle those moments that bring it into the open.
But each time that fears raises its head we will do some of the most crazy things…it is the child reactions that we have put in place all those years ago and reinforced as we grew up…but still not understood. So each time we enter that fear, regardless if its a life fear or scared from the first time jumping out of a plane…they all do one thing.
They put us on guard, they stress the body, they trigger the fright or flight syndrome which all does one thing…it begins to fire the adrenal gland. And how do we feel after being frightened or stressed (physically or emotionally), it tires us out, it drains us and leaves us in almost a state of shock if it is a large enough scare.
Combine that with a circumstance like your fight to get some sanity into a governing system that is built like a brick wall, and most certainly your heart and mind will become drained and leave you with a feeling of hopelessness.
Just remember there are ‘natural’ fears and there are ‘built’ ones. The natural ones are more brief, easier to get over and leave us wiser because we see and understand them. It is the built one that constantly drains us, as we never understand the ‘why’ of our reactions.
Now my fear, once I understood what drove it, became like the natural ones…because I understood it. And like those other natural ones, once understood they no longer have purpose and they lose that power over us. I can see that I don’t have to hold them anymore because they are no longer a danger to me.
My dad did love me…in his own way, simply because it was all he was ever taught. And even if he was the biggest heathen on this earth, he still did not know how to love any other way but what he was shown by his parents and his environment. It didn’t mean he was wrong…I thought he was. It didn’t mean he couldn’t love…I thought he couldn’t. It didn’t make him not my dad…I thought that. And I dragged it all kicking and screaming into my adulthood trying to make everyone else fit the bill. It is always at ‘my end’ that I have to deal with.
Note: After ranting and raving about how bad my father was to a friend one day, she slowly turned to me and said: ‘he’s been dead 13 years, who’s holding onto what and causing you grief?’
(I wouldn’t speak to her for weeks….but dammit she was so right 🙂 )
Once I finally understood, everything changed. And I mean everything. After seeing what I had blocked all my life, after that final admittance to myself that he did in fact love me, the ‘let go’ of so much that I had held inside, I began to ‘see’ the truth around me. I was so focused by eyes that were shuttered by my fear that in that ‘let go’ I finally saw things that were tarnished by those beliefs and realised I was living a lie in everything I did it was that profound.
And once I saw that I also realised that there was soooo much stuff that I was holding onto that was just rubbish. Worrying about this or that and now realising it was a safety mechanism. Gave me something to focus on…so that I wouldn’t have to face those things I didn’t want to.
And over the years afterwards I have become new. I have ‘created’ a new life, something so much more natural because it isn’t forced, no longer built by those fears and the reactions that it triggers. Shoot momus, I even had to learn to walk again because of that ‘let go’. You relax for the very first time afterwards but your legs (and the rest of your body) is so used to being a certain way that it now ‘feels’ so different.
Oh, nearly forgot, because of that ‘let go’ the rest of the world no longer matters. Yes I care very much about it all and those in it…but…I did me first (finally), found what was wrong with me and healed it…otherwise I am only giving out that bent fearful version and actually adding to the cacophony that is already there. Do me and then I can give out that healed loving version.
Once you see and understand those fears that we hold, we then realise that this conditional world is here for a very important reason. We must experience and feel each opposite feeling or to what can we judge each of those individually by? It is that journey to touch, feel and understand all those opposites so that the good and bad, the happy and the sad, the joy and the anger and many other opposites all have one very distinctive purpose. They show us…us. They allow us to experience, feel, reason and argue until that wall we hold loses its argument with us and it comes crumbling down. And we finally see a love and empathy that it has blocked forever…inside of us. And in doing so we realise that much of what went before was a great teacher but the wisdom we have now gained no longer needs those things so they are released.
And with that wisdom, and because of all that has been experienced, we can now see it within others because of their thinking and actions. And in the beginning we try to help them through this world to reach where we are (like the children in your classes…you know, when you finally see that light go on in their eyes when that type of math’s problem gives them that aha moment), but the beauty of it is that they can only hear what they are ready for so that the adventure is a very personal, achievable, and oh so loving thing to break through and realise that it is you and you only that has created this beauty inside. No one else can be blamed or interfere because of that…and that only allows one thing to happen, a love and belief in yourself.
That ending is perfection in itself. And all because you have endured a great journey, achieved something against some of the most tremendous odds, believed when there seemed to be no ending, and found a treasure that when you finally see it, will bring you to tears. Not painful ones from a tearing heart, but ones that finally are built from a love that finally see’s a light where none had been seen before.
Become that light and it will shine out as a beacon of truth forever and attract accordingly.
I look forward to Prime Minister Momus and finally someone I would vote for gladly, someone who has that light that gives hope for the future, simply because I can see her heart and know where she has been to find it 💜