My brother and I are having discussions about choices, why we make them, when we make them, how we make them, and even if it is Us making them!
So first of all I had to look up the word Choice in the dictionary.
Choice:
1. the act of choosing: Selection, finding it hard to make a choice.
2. power of choosing: Option, you have no choice.
3. the best part: cream b. a person or thing chosen, she was their first choice.
4. a number and variety to choose among, a plan with a wide choice of options
5. care in selecting
6. a grade of meat between prime and good.
Also, the synonyms of Choice are; option, alternative, preference, selection, election.
In reading what the Webster Dictionary has to say about choices, a few things popped out. The Act and Power of choosing.
There is a book, “The Eight Habit- From Effectiveness to Greatness” by Stephen R. Covey that I read.
And what I discovered while reading that book was the space needed to make a choice. It seems that those of us who were raised in a dysfunctional environment, we have a very small window for choice. That something happens and we have a knee jerk reaction, and not a response to what is happening.
It is the space where I believe the difference lies.
If you have space, an open area around life, where things happen, but you are able to respond instead of react, your choices are much wider.
Once we begin to respond more than react, the space gets bigger, not smaller.
I may have to re-read that book.
In my humble opinion, I believe that the more empowered you are, the more whole you are, the more in reality you are, the more choices you have available, and will chose the one that best suits your truth.
My brother’s blog, www.messyguru.typepad.com gave an example of a Rapist, that he doesn’t have a choice that is what he does. Just as an Artist does Art, a Rapist does Rape, and a Homeless man has no Home.
We can all agree that a homeless man has no house, but can we agree that he is making that choice?
I used to be a woman without power, a powerless woman totally out of control and needing all things in control. I was the ruler of this mental land, and It all had to be perfect so I could react perfectly.
It was the problem, not me.
If only was my mantra, “If only the kids would be this way and that way, then I would be a good mother, and not have to scream.
It was so not my bad choice, but the kids.
If I only had perfect children, then I could be a perfect mom.
If only they would learn what makes me go mental and avoid doing that.
They had the power over my buttons, not me.
I was a victim of my children.
I just heard Byron Katie say on the Sirius Radio, that all victims are violent. And boy do I agree.
When I slowly and painfully began to realize that my children were just simply children, that it wasn’t their job to groom me, I was no longer a victim of their behavior.
I was free. I was responsible for my own buttons, my own actions or reactions, my responses and choices I made, and it left them free in theirs as well.
It was their job to do their lives, be a child, be a daughter, but it had nothing to do with me, for me or about me.
When I landed in my business, when my mouth was mine to control, when my words were mine to choose, I then had a full time job just being present with me! To watch what I was doing, saying and being!
There have been moments that I was literally screaming at them, that I am not supposed to do this, but I don’t know how to do this any other way!
I had to wrestle myself out of the reactions and walk into alternatives, but my very first thing I had to do was to realize that I was not a victim.
I wasn’t a victim of my children, that they did not have the power to make me mad, to make me scream, to make me totally lose control of my words and how they rained upon them.
My hollering was like a shower of dysfunction that rained and coated them with layers of feeling unworthy, for they couldn’t behave well enough to make me kind.
Isn’t that like blaming the girl for the rapist’s actions?
When I realized and was in shock and awe of how backwards I had this world, that the world had to calm down so I could calm down, the world had to be loving so I could be loving, and when it failed I railed at it, screaming to change the outside, so my insides would calm down.
Again, it is like blaming the little girl in the molestation, and in the mind of the perpetrator he does!
He too is a victim of that little innocent girl and until he realizes she isn’t the problem, he is, there will be no freedom from perpetrators of violence.
All they are trying to do is get love, and they don’t know how else to get it.
Does this sound mental? Take it from me, it was such a violent world before I understood this, I was so violent inside that at times it scared even me, the strength and volume of anger and rage I held inside, victims indeed are very violent people.
I was a victim as a small child, and it was the theme I carried forward and what I learned about life.
When someone was able to steal my love, my trust and my faith in myself, I was left alone and empty inside, and I then moved forward seeking to regain it back, to steal and wrangle it back from anyone or anything in front of me.
My choices then were all very selfish and manipulative, I did so much just to get my self back, my love back, my trust back, I did it all for the sake of me!
It had nothing to do with them, they were just collateral damage along my path, new victims being born, all for my desire to get my love back.
When I could see myself, my mental self, I could also see the ones who paid the price, the damage lay all around, my children bore the brunt of my mentalness.
I sat in tears in an office of a physiologist, bawling about the fact that I had ruined my kids, I wrecked them, my mentalness left marks upon my children. What can I do now, what can I possible do to undo the years of damage?
I recall her saying that what I was doing, was going to heal them all. That by staying in reality and by making better ‘choices’ I am undoing and showing them how to be a survivor and not a victim.
I am still not sure if this answers the question of choice, but what I know for sure is that victims will make choices at the cost of others, and those who are no longer victims will make choices based on the truth of self.
My truth of self, is that I am whole and complete without needing to steal love from others, I no longer feel that others must act a certain way for me to be happy, I am happy without them or in spite of them!
I am no longer a of victim of this world. I am now just an imperfect lady who knows what it is like to live as a victim or not. I much prefer the non-victim status. In my own imperfect way, I walked free.
