Should You Give Yourself Credit?
Aspiring Bankers want to know!
I’m walking around this morning, weeding through the clothes I would like to warsh, already have done quite a bit of handy work on my new craft. And I say,
“I am so lucky I am a morning person, none of this laundry would be done today. This kilt wouldn’t be half sewn.”
Truthfully, the laundry is not done, I was projecting into the future unsuccessfully because instead, I sat down to write you all a burning question.
Are our successes Lucky/Programmed or should we be be patting ourselves on the back?
If you dig down deeper into the splinter of each success you find the seed of inflammation, The Inciting Incident; Passion, desire, a natural affinity, A choice, a decision, a lack of control. And that inciting incident unleashed a “ticking time bomb”.
Maybe something you were born into. Maybe something you ran away from.
There are enough twin studies to suggest there is little up to chance and no matter what you do you will turn 55 and somehow hit the wardrobe you were genetically programed to achieve, maybe some kind of golf vest and pants with deep pockets.
You can only wonder, if born a thousand years ago, what would you be wearing based on the same programming?
They didn’t have fleece or polyester, they didn’t have zippers. But today, it has been written, you buy one of these fucking vests with zipper pockets, you borrow some voluminous pants, you reach down and delight that you have a whole sandwich in your pocket and there is none the wiser…there is no turning back.
The dies is cast.
There is no rehab for this. Not saying it’s bad, but the path can’t be untrod. The wardrobe is final. RIP, Rest in Polyester.
I have been to rehab for an eating disorder. It did not rehabilitate me, it didn’t, honestly I think the program they used was pretty silly; telling a bunch of people with eating disorders to keep to a meticulous written menu with a calorie quotient, what could go wrong here (lol)? Kinda like giving a junkie a kit and telling them to drink orange juice with it.
Still the experience had its use, even with my share of breaking the rules, being captive there did show me that I actually had the ability to make the choice of being alive and eating, drinking, ect, those things were not mutually exclusive (people with eating disorders often equate eating with self destruction). It showed me I had the ability to digest and actually, when I did, that was workable. It was challenging but it was an option I had. It took a while still for me to put that all together for myself in the real world, but I don’t know what I would have done (died probably) if I didn’t have the chance to see that it was possible for me to be digestively functional. It opened a door for me and the winds of imagination swept through it.
Imagination is a force, or energy, that allows such a connection to be made. The realization of this interdependent relationship carries with it a kind of freedom for the individual. William Blake saw the human imagination as essential to human understanding of the world; he saw reality as a "mental construction." According to Blake and the other Romantic poets, once the energy of imagination is used effectively to realize the connection between man and nature, the individual gains freedom from the restrictive bonds of unimaginative thought.
-The "Mind-Forg'd Manacles" of Blake's Poetry, By Elizabeth Whitney
If I hope for anything as an artist, it’s that I inspire certain people to be who they really are. My audiences seem to be people who have been given a hard time for being who they are.”
― Sinead O'Connor, Rememberings
Each choice is a water slide. You sit yo’ ass down somewhere and you will be slid and tossed. Things happen quickly, but if you have imagined an outcome from your choices, there is a good chance you will direct towards it if you’ve stayed true to course.
Keeping your wits about you on this crazy ride, making micro and macro adjustments, you have an advantage. The point of that advantage is to get to that point where you feel reasonably self satisfied, and so at that point people may discuss who gets credit for where you have “successfully” “landed”.
Similarly, if you end up somewhere BAD, deciding who takes credit for that also seems like a rite of passage.
You can undo a lot of things. If you're not happy, you can become happy. Happiness is a choice. That's the thing I really feel.
Jennifer Aniston
SOME, people say that happiness is a choice, I think only people with hope say that, and it totally skips the first step. If you believe that happiness is not possibility for you, if you have no reason to believe that it is, you are at an incredible disadvantage.
You may as well tell someone becoming an elephant is a choice. You may have just come up with the procedure to make a person an elephant, but the patient is going to need to see some evidence and you will want to see a hefty downpayment. (Important Note: The down payments for elective medical procedures should be large enough so that if the patient changes their mind about getting the surgery, they will still feel financially obligated to carry it out. Honestly, it’s the only way to do it.)
There are a lot of choices you can make, not one that guarantees your happiness. That point where you get to decide if you get credit or not, that is an important milestone because there you realize you have gotten SOMEWHERE or even NOWHERE, which is also a place. There is something there in that place of no place that you need to consider, mostly because you are already considering it.
Accepting and anticipating your inevitable failures as a valuable destination may be easier than choosing happiness as if it were an option at a juice bar or a medical procedure you made the downpayment on.
Happiness may exist but it is not an end point, it is a flow that sometimes flows into BAD things.
Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When people feed you lines, don’t say them , UNLESS you are in a play. If you are in a play, you should say your lines, unless you want to ruin the play. If you want to ruin the play, why are you in a play?
ava k lamb
And so it is, that both the Devil and the angelic Spirit present us with objects of desire to awaken our power of choice.
Rumi
Some interesting thoughts and muses in this newsletter, gave me some encouragement of my own particular insights ✍🏼
Thought provoking and giggle inducing! Thanks Ava!!!