It seems that it is my turn on the AW Blogchain. After Shauna’s wonderful post, I find myself at a loss for words (doesn’t happen often…). Shauna offered up a painfully honest view of her childhood. She took facts that others would have hidden and put them out there for the world to see. I commend her and I hope she has found happiness and closure on what must have been a painful and confusing start to life.
Shauna also talked about her obsession with redecorating. Yes, most of us enjoy transforming our homes into new and exciting spaces, but there was an element of Shauna’s post that really struck me. For her, redecorating was a way to make a stand against the type of life she had as a child. On her own, as an adult, she had a choice to make. Should she continue to run from place to place or should she could put down roots and begin to make her own choices for her life? It seems that she chose to take
control, and that is the topic of my post.
Each of us comes from childhood with baggage and emotional idiosyncrasies. It could be the propensity to gossip, passed down from mother to child. Perhaps it is a lack of financial responsibility that we took from our parents, a desire to spend every dollar earned. Or maybe it is an inability to display our emotions, holding them tight so that no one sees us cry. We certainly don’t take these things knowingly. They are embedded in our personalities, woven into our being through years of learning at our parent’s knees. They manifest through unconscious emotional response. How we respond to life depends on whether we stop to think rationally or just react.
Each and every person on this planet has a hole, a flaw (at least one!!). If we take the time to truly analyze our personalities, we may just be surprised at what we find. We have the ability to take control, to weed out that which we do not like about ourselves.
In my own life, I feel it is time to take control. I want to open the window of my soul and begin cleaning out the cobwebs. I want to toss out the useless responses that I learned as a child, and replace them with the rational, well-thought out actions of adulthood. I want to save my emotional responses for things like love, generosity, and kindness. I want to eradicate hate, jealously, and pettiness, and replace them with serenity.
I want to take control and make my own choices in life. What about you?
And with that, I pass you all on to Cath (Mad About Kites). I can’t wait to see where she takes this.
(The Blog Formerly Known as) Taosbound
October 2nd, 2007 at 12:20 pm
There are things I learned from my parents that took years and years to unlearn. I kept the positive things and let the negative go. I totally understand.
October 2nd, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Wanting to change is half the battle, or more, Kat. I believe you can become whoever you want to be. So, yay!
October 2nd, 2007 at 4:22 pm
Great post! Nothing angers me more than for my husband to say I’m acting like my mother. I hope it’s never true. She is very loving, but way overprotective. I still feel the need to be very independent from her and live in a different city. In a way, I think that relationship has made it more difficult for me to get close to others. I don’t want someone to try to control me the way she did.
October 2nd, 2007 at 5:23 pm
Me too! Recently, however, I am finding so many flaws, I get overwhelmed and don’t know where to start even. *sigh* Or I start thinking about the wonderful parts of my parents’ characters that I somehow didn’t end up with.
Very beautiful blog too, btw.
October 2nd, 2007 at 6:26 pm
The best way to take control of your life is to take control of your mind. Rather than let your mind rule your life, you need to rule your mind. Still, far easier said than done.
October 2nd, 2007 at 7:14 pm
I’ve found that the best way to change my response (because, as you say, we all have baggage and I come with a LOT of it) is to find someone supportive and willing to help. Few things can be done alone and changing your outlook on life is especially tricky.
I’ve also found that Buddhism and Taoism have really helped me. They teach that you are to stay “in the middle.” You accept a feeling and allow it, really and truly feel it, then you let it pass and move on to something else. In allowing the feeling to come and go, you give yourself the opportunity to get over it sooner.
Anyhow, I’m rambling. The best of luck to you, Kat. A wonderful post, by the way.
October 3rd, 2007 at 10:45 am
[...] posted a thought provoking entry to the AW blogchain (you can read it here: Taking Control). She said one thing in particular that I’d like to pick [...]
October 6th, 2007 at 8:54 am
Dealing with flaws from our childhood is the toughest thing, but it can also give us some of the most interesting developments in our lives. And drabbit, you’ve turned me all inward and reflective!
October 8th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
This has been quite the chain. Lots of serious contemplation and sharing. I suppose being open to change puts you a longs ways towards achieving it. We are all shaped by our environment and it definitely keeps things from being to boring. Best of luck and thanks for joining in the chain.
October 12th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
I like the way you moved from the external transformation of changing the home to the internal transformation of changing yourself. Keep up the good work.
Jerry