Category: Words To Live By

Four years ago, in early August of 2014, I wrote an article about how much I loved the area I had just moved to here in the Midwest. It didn’t take long after that though for my opinion to change, as these days, I struggle to find acceptance here, mostly because of the constant rejections, criticisms, and judgments I continue to face.

While I have lived in many places throughout my life and made many friends and acquaintances in each of those areas quite easily, life has been overwhelmingly difficult in that department for me here in the Midwest.

For whatever the reason, I have been a magnet for people to dump their projections on me. I’ve been told I don’t try hard enough to make friends and yet I’ve also been told just as much that I try too hard to make friends. I’ve been told I’m too intense and yet I’ve also been told I’m a little too boring. I’ve been told I act better than everyone else and yet I’ve also been I don’t act confident enough. I’ve been told I’m too personal and yet I’ve also been told I’m not personal enough. I’ve been told I can’t be trusted and also been told I’m too trustworthy. The list goes on and thus, I’m sure you can see the dilemma I’ve faced.

So many people have had such strong opinions of me in this area, all differing from each other. That’s uniquely different though from how easily I was able to make friends and blend in all my former places of living. I was reminded of that when I visited my best friend in Massachusetts recently. There, people I hadn’t seen in a long time made sure to take the time to come out and see me, while others I met for the first time on that trip, wished I would return to their community so they could draw closer to me. All in all, I generally felt more embraced and connected during my seven days there, as compared to the last four years here.

For whatever the reason, I’m just not well liked here and that’s become overly apparent not just to me, but also my partner. He has seen me try over and over and over again to make friends and witnessed me work diligently on trying to become an unconditionally loving, non-judgmental, and fully accepting person. But, in the process, still seen far too many people viciously attack me, talk behind my back, avoid me like the plague, and treat me like I was one of the worst people that could have ever come to live in this area.

The number of rejections, criticisms, and judgments I’ve received here from his family, from the recovery community, and from other social circles I’ve tried to be a part, have been staggering. Yet, I never faced anything quite like this when I lived in Massachusetts, in the Washington D.C. area, in the Eastern Shore of Virginia, or in New York, each being the places I formerly called home.

So, what’s different?

Besides the fact that all those other places were on the East Coast, the only other things that have changed dramatically are how focused I am on my recovery now, how dedicated I am on growing my relationship with God, and how much I seek to rid myself of all low vibrational behaviors. Yet, if any of those things were truly placing me in a position to be rejected, criticized, or judged, wouldn’t it have followed me back to Massachusetts when I visited there a few weeks ago? They say you are wherever you go. Yet, for the week I spent back in Massachusetts, I was overly loved, embraced, and accepted, three things I miss incredibly here in the Midwest.

In all honesty, I haven’t felt like I can be myself here, as being myself has only led to alienation with far too many people. I don’t know what it is about me that creates such polarization here, but I’ve come to the acceptance that my personality and make-up just doesn’t work that well in the Midwest. Regardless, I know I’ve done my best and am inclined to believe that maybe I’m just meant to spend more time alone here than with others.

Maybe that’s why God brought me here to the Midwest, to an area where I was always meant to spend more time in solitude, reflecting on my life, connecting more with Him, and learning to be ok with me just as I am, even when much of the rest of the world here has seemingly not been totally loving accepting of me.

While it has hurt immensely to be rejected, criticized, and judged as much as I have here, to have been unfriended and blocked on social media as many times as I have here too, and to have been left off of a number of party invitations and get-togethers here as well, I believe there is one who has never treated me like this whatsoever and that’s God. That’s because I believe God loves me just as I am and sees how hard I’ve tried to become a healthier individual, a more loving person, and a more caring being of Light.

So, in the end really, while I’ve struggled to find acceptance here in the Midwest, and faced as much opposition as I have for whatever the reasons, when it comes down to it, I think the only acceptance I truly need is from God. And when push comes to shove, maybe that’s all that truly matters anyway…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

“It is what it is!” Have you ever noticed how many times we use this in our everyday conversations with each other? Honestly, I have to admit that I tend to cringe whenever I hear that phrase.

“This traffic sucks, c’mon people let’s get a move on it! Oh well, it is what it is!”

CRINGE!

“Man, this weather is crazy, one day blistering heat, the next day it’s freezing! Oh well, it is what it is!”

CRINGE!

“Damn, I can’t get this stain out of my shirt no matter how many times I wash it! Oh well, it is what it is!”

CRINGE!

 Why do we use this saying for so many things?!

The more I’ve thought about it, the more I think it’s just another way of people trying to find acceptance with less than desired circumstances in life, especially when they appear to be totally out of their control. Which ironically, is a subject that seems to be the main focus of much of my life (and my writing) as of late and probably the very reason why I find myself so annoyed any time I hear someone using the “It is what it is!” phrase these days.

The very fact this saying keeps getting under my skin as much as it has been recently led me to believe there was probably an underlying reason for that. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if maybe the Universe was trying to remind me of something my 1^stsponsor introduced me to when she had me read a paragraph on p. 417 in the 4^thedition of the Alcoholics Anonymous big book a ton of times. It begins with nine very eloquent, yet quite simple words…

“Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today…”

Nine words that seem to keep showing up in my life in far too many ways lately to be just a coincidence!

Nevertheless, learning acceptance is one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in life. While I’m pretty good at doing that when it comes to the things that don’t have much of a direct impact upon my life, like with drastic weather or congested traffic or even a stain on my shirt, I’m quite awful with it when it comes to the things that I feel closely tied to, like with my yard and its present state of being fungus and insect-riddled. And when I don’t practice acceptance with things just like this, I generally exhaust myself in repeated attempts to find ways to fix it or remove it from my life.

Unfortunately, trying to fix or remove all those unsettling things from my life has only ever hindered my quest towards spiritual enlightenment, solely because each of those attempts to do so merely caused my faith to be more in myself than in something Greater. Sadly, I lived that way for a long time, the result of which only led to sheer exhaustion and pure frustration on a daily basis.

So, while I might indeed not like whenever I hear those cringe-worthy words, “It is what it is!”, I’m choosing to believe that maybe they’re actually a gift from Source to take a deeper look at the very thing I’ve avoided the majority of my life, that being acceptance of what is, no matter how unsettling it may appear to be. Because the alternative, of placing my faith in my ego to find a solution to fixing it or removing it from my life is only going to leave me feeling entirely miserable and distant from God, two things I most assuredly don’t want to happen…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

There are a number of things going on in my life right now that have really gotten to me like the state of my health or my partner’s health or our vehicles or most recently, our yard and because of them, my mind keeps trying to convince me that if I could just get them all to where I think they need to be, that life would finally be grand. But, I’m pretty sure that’s all an illusion that is often far too easy to buy into.

You see, the reality I’ve found is that life is and has always been full of unsettling things for my mind and ego. And just when I clear one of those unsettling things off of my plate and feel in control of my life for a moment, another unsettling thing appears and becomes the source of my misery, immediately causing my life to feel out of control again.

It’s as if I’m on this endless quest to be free of all unsettling things and yet I continue to find that it’s an impossible feat to ever achieve and only attempting to still do so ends up driving myself totally insane.

Take our yard for example, I have spent countless hours and dollars doing my best over the past few years to make it green and lush and perfectly manicured, all with the idea that it could look pristine enough to appear on the cover of some home and garden magazine someday, or at least at the very minimum, be the one thing I could feel in control of given the number of things that seem out of my control lately. That all went out the window though when I came home from my vacation last Sunday night and saw that the disease and insect damage I had been constantly fighting with one chemical after another before I left, had fully taken over the majority of my yard leaving it with massive brown and bare spots everywhere.

At first, I was angry, then sad, and eventually just numb. Numb because I came to realize that no matter how much control I seem to exert on things like my yard, or my health, or my partner, or our vehicles, or anything really, that it only leads to more misery and very little peace of mind. And it’s then I began to wonder if maybe God was allowing all these things to happen to help me finally see and accept the real truth. Truth that the only way to achieve peace of mind and peace in general in life is to let go of every unsettling thing I think I need to control and simply accept them as being exactly the way they are supposed to be at this moment.

That means letting go of trying to rid my yard of all its problems and accepting its current disease and insect-riddled nature as being exactly the way it’s supposed to be at this moment.

It’s means letting go of trying to find a solution to removing all my health issues and accepting that every ailment I feel is exactly as it’s supposed to be at this moment.

It means letting go of trying to prevent our vehicles from breaking down any further and accepting that any repairs that arise are exactly what’s supposed to be at this moment.

And it means letting go of trying to control my partner’s weight and 12 Step recovery work and accepting the state of both is exactly as they’re supposed to be at this moment.

I must say that I have been relatively unsuccessful thus far in doing this, yet, for those rare moments where I have ever achieved that state of fully letting go and accepting something that has been totally unsettling in my life as exactly the way it’s supposed to be, I’ve become far more content and at peace, and also been able to witness how the problem simply seemed to resolve itself, all on its own.

While I know this process of letting go and accepting all those unsettling things seems relatively easy in concept, it actually is far harder in application and usually feels like it’s going against the grain of a human being’s inherent nature.

Maybe that’s why so many of us become so miserable in life, because we keep sticking to our inherent nature, rather than going against that grain to see where it may lead?

What would happen if we all let go of control and accepted all those unsettling things that enter our life as being exactly the way they were supposed to be at that moment?

I’m quite sure our fears would probably tell us the results would be far from good.

Yet, maybe, just maybe, the results of such a massive step into the unknown might lead to an everlasting peace and connection to Source, one that I know I for one want to achieve way before I ever take my last dying breath…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson