Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree Below.
My mentor likes to ask if I’ve accomplished certain goals and visions, and then how I feel about them. I had told her a couple of months ago that I was always too busy to socialize yet I wanted to meet new friends. With a huge caveat. New friends who were positive-minded and upbeat, yet real. New friends who would share a lot of common ground. New friends who would not spend most of their time living vicariously through me or telling me what I should or shouldn’t be doing. New friends who would be an obvious break in the predominant pattern in my life.
Not that my old friends or current friends have been all bad! But several instances since the summer have highlighted the near-impossibility of talking with an old friend I hadn’t seen in years without all that judgment because I’m not doing the things they want me to do with my life. Then again, they’re not doing what they want with their own lives.
But it’s that caveat that’s kept me from making many new social contacts for the past year or more as I’ve whittled down my circle, intentionally and unintentionally.
When I next meet my Personal Yoda, I’ll report several new opportunities to meet and enjoy the company of new friends, even though most will be in this area for only another six to 12 months. (I guess that’s to keep me from getting too attached to anything here?) I’ll also get to report lunch with a new friend as being a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10.
C.S. is a new friend I met through my journal, a woman about my age with tons in common, with very few exceptions. Most notable, she’s in a strong, long-term marriage that allows for a lot of independence as well as family/team effort. But other than that weird blind-date feeling of meeting someone face-to-face for the first time after talking online, it was just incredible to talk with someone with a positive outlook who isn’t Pollyanna either. How cool to talk about our dreams and futures without anyone saying, “That’s not going to work” or some paraphrased version of “You’re going to fail.” No, just a warm, open-minded, positive person.
But that’s what I’ve been calling in for several months. More people in my life with this kind of mindset.
I have reluctantly come to believe that the things in our lives are what we’ve called in, even the bad stuff and the drama. I did say, didn’t I, that I wanted to be able to help other people overcome their problems by sharing my experiences with them? So I’ve observed and discussed a lot of drama and been hit between the eyes with a lot more. I’ve had some downright bad stuff happen to me that wasn’t fun at all, and much of it broke my heart in umpteen different ways but made me into a more compassionate person with a better grasp of why people do the things they do and how we are all connected in the human experience. I have a lot those “experiences to be overcome” in my tool box now. In fact, I think I have all that I need of those.
It’s time to tweak my plan. I’m still going to help people defy their pasts and manifest their futures by sharing my experiences, but I’m now going to call in more positive experiences to share. I will remain an observer of other peoples’ dramas but I will no longer get pulled into fixing things for them as I as a codependent so often have. I’ll be “neutral” and “observe” while I live my own life.
My life is about to become something truly extraordinary.
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