Sheesh. How many more times will I have to navigate this particular circuit before I have learned everything I can from it?
It almost feels as though I have been given a false map. There are things people say that, if I allow them to guide me, will take me completely off course because they don’t align with reality, their actions, or my lived experience.
I am starting to recognize that the real story lives inside the patterns.
Words do matter. Conversations matter. Moments matter. But patterns persist regardless of what is said. Sometimes there is an incongruency or lack of alignment between words, the suggested intent of those words, and actions. Sometimes things are not communicated directly at all, and yet they are communicated clearly through repeated behaviors.
I am intentionally allowing patterns to inform me more than peak moments, conversations, or exchanges.
If there is a beautiful moment in a relationship, I can no longer hold onto that moment as though it represents the relationship as a whole. I will not waste energy trying to figure out how to get back to that place, as though I have somehow lost the thread. Perhaps it was the exception. Possibly, it was simply a moment.
The information is in the pattern.
That doesn’t necessarily tell me what is true in some absolute sense, but it does tell me what is real.
And when I allow patterns to inform what I say or do next, I am able to remain aligned with my quest for sovereignty and radical neutrality.
A thing has happened.
I don’t get to change it, reinterpret it, or spin it into something else. I don’t have to lose myself reacting or trying to understand it from every possible angle. I don’t have to overexplain my experience or convince anyone else of it.
I can simply acknowledge what is and decide what my actual options are, keeping in alignment with my North Star.
Whatever else may be true, this also happened.
