Category: Words To Live By

Things aren’t always what they seem like from the outside looking in. I made mention to this briefly in yesterday’s posting but felt it might be best to elaborate on this a little more. Because of my own experiences of what I’m going through with chronic pain, I’ve come come to understand that I shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover anymore. And for a long time I did.

Growing up in a family that was judgmental often, it was easy for me to become that way too. As I grew older and became more active in many types of addictions that consumed my life, my judgments of what my eyes were seeing around me also grew. If I saw a person driving recklessly on the road, I swore profusely at them and called the driver many awful names. If I passed by someone begging on the streets with a cardboard sign and a cup, I would avoid them and think they just need to get a job. If I watched someone cutting in a line I was waiting in, I would get quite angry and vocal about it as I thought what makes them so special. If I observed a person parking in a handicap spot somewhere, I would think they were cheating the system if I saw them get out and not have any visible signs of disability. And so on and so forth.

My whole perception of this with people and life changed dramatically though three years ago when all of this pain started and my own little world of judgments that I had created began to cave in. I found myself doing much of the things that I had judged others doing for years. I drove recklessly out of anger from what I was feeling in my body. I wasn’t able to work and started asking others to help out with paying for things I was still partaking in. I cut in lines because it was too painful to stand for any length of time. I parked in handicapped spots on days when the pain was too unbearable to walk very far.

Life turned into an endless stream of me limping around, acting like a gloomy Gus, and making sure everyone knew I was hurting and disabled. As time has passed since then, I have grown stronger in my ability to conceal the pain. This world has a lot of misery in it, and I decided as time passed with the pain I was enduring, that I needed to do my best to not add any more to it. Unfortunately, that also brought about the same behaviors happening to me that I once did to others.

A few weeks ago when I was at the airport getting ready for a flight, I went to the counter to ask for an early boarding slip because of the difficulties I have in standing for any period. The man at the counter looked me up and down and I could feel he was judging me as I once judged others. He then asked me what my disability was and gave me a look like I was making it up when I told him. Several months back I went to a movie screening and while I was waiting in line, I asked for a chair to sit in for the same reason I asked to pre-board that plane early. A short time after siting down on the chair that was brought to me, a theater employee told me he was going to need the chair I was sitting on. I responded that I needed it because of my own inability to stand for long periods and he looked at me and said it didn’t look like I had any disability and walked away irritated. Sadly, both of those people judging me for what they saw was what I did for many, many years.

Because of what I’ve learned in all of this, my compassion has grown for all people today. These judgments I once spewed out of my mouth have grown less and less. And I’ve been able to see things with a completely different set of eyes. When I see a person now driving recklessly, or begging, or cutting in line, or parking in a handicapped spot when they don’t look handicapped, I remind myself that I don’t know their story and I don’t know them. Maybe that reckless driver is heading to the hospital to see someone close to them who is in dire straits. Maybe that person begging has just lost their job, has two young kids to feed on their own, and the money from unemployment isn’t enough. Maybe that person cutting in line has someone waiting for them out in the car that is abusive and they are afraid of being beaten down in some way if they don’t hurry up. Maybe that person parking in the handicapped spot is just like me, concealing their pain so as not to draw attention but secretly cringing with every step they take. Sure, I could look at each of these incidents on the negative side thinking they are cheating some system, and say what I used to, but I choose to look at them now with compassion instead. It has made me a lot less angry and irritable based person.

The bottom line in all of what I’m saying is pretty simple. As much as I was angry at God for a long time about all of this pain, I am realizing now that it’s been a gift because it’s helped me to see things so differently that once irritated me and brought out a lot of judgments. When I see something today that sets off those parts of my brain which once lead me to judging any book by its cover, I am able to create a completely different story. One that has compassion. One that has patience. And one that is filled with God’s love for all people and all things no matter what their cover may look like.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

So much of my life has been spent fighting change. I’ve found myself countless numbers of times over the years boxing myself in and throwing up walls trying to maintain a sense of safety. Many would say I was living in my own perfect world. Time and time again when someone or something came across my own utopia, I would work diligently to either incorporate it within my safe realm or I would quickly find ways to avoid dealing with it. That was until I started sitting with myself meditating and learning to live in the moment.

Life in itself is about change. From the moment of my birth to the last breath I take on this planet, my body has and will continue to undergo change. Even externally to me, such as in nature, change is prevalent. Fall, winter, spring, and summer, each of these seasons brings changes in weather, animals, plants, and trees. So why is it then I continue to fight change tooth and nail time and time again? Simply put, it often seems easier to know what is going to happen, to have all the details planned, and to know all the possible scenarios. But, in living my life that way, I reduce myself to a state of boredom and numbness. If at any point I am ever forced to change, I always seem to end up in state of frustration and anger. I know now that this stemmed from how I was raised as a child. Change was never welcomed in the home I was brought up in. Everything was always planned so far ahead right on down to the smallest details. The best example revolved around our annual two week vacation. Months before the first day of it ever arrived, a day by day itinerary was already developed of how far we were going to drive, where we were going to stop, what activities we were going to partake in once there, and what restaurants we were going to dine at each night. Things done on the spur of the moment were a rare thing indeed in my family. We stuck to a formula and our lives became a paradox to life itself as I don’t believe there is a formula to life. I’m learning now that change has always brought me, and will continue to bring me joy, but only if I allow those changes to happen. The joy may not be immediate, but it always does come when it’s meant to.

I once came across a story of only five pages with just a few sentences on each of the pages. These few sentences helped to provide me the foundation to accept change. They went a little something like this.

Page 1: “A person walks down the street and sees a hole and falls in it.”

Page 2: “A person walks down the same street and pretends not to see the hole and falls in it anyway.”

Page 3: “A person walks down the same street with the same hole and tells themselves they won’t fall in it this time but they do so anyway.”

Page 4: “A person walks down the same street with the same hole and walks around it.”

Page 5: “A person walks down a completely different street with no holes.”

I have walked down the same streets falling into the same holes so many times in my life avoiding even the slightest changes which might have led me to walk around those holes or even down different streets that were hole-less. But, in losing both my parents to untimely deaths, and living my life in so many addictions that never provided me any long lasting peace, happiness, joy, or love, I began to look at life differently. Not wanting to follow in either of my parents paths nor desiring to live in any more addictions, I am trying today to head down a completely new street, one where change is welcomed in all parts of my life as God sees fit.

So how does one walk down these new streets and experience those changes that lead to a better life? Essentially in my case, it meant walking through fear and going down those paths I resisted most. Have you ever tried to not get the last word in during a heated discussion? Have you ever tried to not offer your opinion on a subject you know a lot about? Have you ever tried to not seek reassurance from others for a crisis you are in? Have you ever tried to not prove you are right even when you know someone is wrong? Have you ever tried to look at the positive in everything even when things seem glaringly negative? These are only just a few of many ways one can take the road less traveled to experience one of those new streets.  Change doesn’t have to start with the big fears either. Try this one for simplicity. The next time you walk into your favorite restaurant, order something new, something you’ve never tried before, not there, not anywhere, just something that you have never tasted yet in your life.  Your risk? You either have a great meal and a new favorite to choose from or you spent a few dollars to learn you will never order that again. Either way you now have greater wisdom, and joy can be felt in that alone.

I’ve spent much of my life resisting change and missing out on greater wisdom and joy because of having one foot trapped in the door to the past with life seeming so much better and one foot trapped in another door to the future where I was afraid of how things were going to become.  Ultimately, because of this, I failed to see each day, in each and every moment, the beauty that change could bring me with each breath I took. By opening myself to even the smallest of changes as I have in the past year, I now find me heading down these new streets more than not, seeing things I never saw, smiling more, and finding my happiness and my relationship with God growing within me exponentially.

I encourage everyone today to take a moment to pause, breathe, and spend time with yourself doing something completely different from the patterns, routines, and boxes you may have gotten yourselves into. I think you might be pleasantly surprised to how much the simplest change will bring you inspiration, and in time, happiness and joy. So far, it has for me, and it can for you as well.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

New relationships can be quite troubling especially when one or both of the people in it keep comparing each other to past flames. Recently I had to have a discussion with my partner about this very issue as he was doing just that by comparing me to a person he had dated just before meeting me.

I’ve had three long term relationships in my life that have lasted at least two years or more and quite a few others of shorter durations. Each of them had their positive qualities throughout but all of them also had many negative ones as well. Unfortunately, until I figured out that I was carrying the downside of those relationships into the ones that were following it, they all continued to crumble around me, one after another.

It’s really not fair for either person in a couple to bring past relationship baggage onto their current one. It undermines any growth that can happen as they try to become closer to each other. It creates anger and resentments between them. And it fuels arguments that destroy the foundation their relationship was built upon in the first place.

I’m guilty of this and have been doing a massive amount of work in my current relationship to prevent this from happening again. I’ve had a lot of tumultuous relationships in my past. I’ve dated active alcoholics and drug addicts, mentally and emotionally abusive people, and many who had serious issues with spending money wastefully. What I never realized were how much of each of those people were only mirrors for myself to the negative behaviors I still held within. Instead of working on my own issues, I cited them out in the people I dated manifesting arguments in the process and comparing them to the past people I dated who had the same traits. Eventually because of this, my own behaviors sabotaged yet another relationship leaving me single all over again.

Now when I see a behavior that really bothers me in my partner, I look at myself and into my past and see if there is something I am hiding from, holding onto, or not wiling or wanting to let go of. In every case, there always is.

Just because a past partner had no money management abilities doesn’t mean that if my current partner overdrafts his bank account once or twice that it’s going to be that same type of relationship. Just because a past partner was angry all the time and abusive doesn’t mean that if my current partner comes home from work one day and lashes out that it’s going to be just like before. And so on and so forth. In any of these cases when trouble arises now, I look at myself and ask where my part was in all of it. I ask questions such as whether I pushed my partner to spend money they didn’t have or whether I did any behaviors that were selfish and self-centered that provoked the anger? What I learned in doing this was gaining the knowledge that the demise of all of my former relationships were as much my own fault as it was with the people I had dated. I had contributed to the negativity in every case with my own behaviors. The biggest realization though that has come to me in the past year of my life on why I had been in so many previous relationships is that God had been left out of them.

I do not believe any relationship can survive without having God at the center of it. After the initial happy romance phase is over and the real work begins to keep it going, trying to hold it together with control and self-will always failed for me. Personalities took over. The inevitable would then happen with me comparing each of them to someone in the past I dated that I felt they were now becoming. What was really happening was the real me was emerging in the relationship. The one that was broken before I got into the relationship that had never healed. The one that still had past demons within me being carried forward over and over and over again. The one that jumped from person to person experiencing only the short periods of time where the oogly-googly occurred and then leaving when that period was over.

The moral of all of this is that my success in any new relationship needed me to face myself and cut all the cords of attachment I still held onto from my negative past. My success with a partner was also dependent on me remembering the positive things I gained and learned in all of those past relationships. I had to forgive each of them and myself for all of the negative things that had happened throughout it. And most importantly, my success with any partner needed me to ask God each and every day to remain at the center of it, guiding it away from control and self-will, and into only where God sees it heading.

I now have over a year with my current partner. So far it’s the best one I’ve ever had. I thank God for that and I’m glad to realize now how much I can’t hold onto or compare any of my past relationships to my current one if I want it to last. I also realize now that anytime I find myself getting angry over anything with him and find myself comparing him in my head to someone from my past, that its probably an area of my life that still needs healing and I go to God in prayer to resolve it. It always comes back to something within me that was still broken and thankfully, through my prayer, God always leads me to healing it.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson