Futility

 

My question for you to consider is twofold. First, calculate how long the issue of estrangement and its pain have been going on in your life.  Secondly, calculate how long you are willing to continue the suffering. I would suggest actually writing down and recording these numbers. Now, take a deep breath and truly imagine where you would like to be regarding this issue in the future, say in 6 months, 12 months, 24 months etc. If nothing changes or gets better, are you willing to live with this level of pain, dysfunction and anguish for the rest of your life? Are you willing to ALLOW yourself to be obsessed and consumed with the level of sadness, grief and loss that has become a new “normal”? Again, take an inventory of everything you have done, tried, contributed, offered, begged and pleaded for or even suggested in order to reach some resolution with your child. Take your time and make an honest assessment of all of your efforts and their successful outcomes. If you are like the majority of us, there have been NO long term successful outcomes. Yet we typically take a breath and keep on hoping that it somehow will get better, easier, something…        May I simply ask ~ has it?

Here’s a hypothetical situation. What if most of the time (but not always) when you walk through the doorway of your house you got an electric shock? You KNOW when you walk through that doorway the shock will  most likely happen. How long would you keep  repeating the same thing? Over and over and over again. Would you simply accept it? What if you looked for another doorway or called someone to help fix the problem? What if despite all your creative ideas and determination, the problem continued? Would you keep doing the same thing, HOPING that against all odds it would somehow get better, with NO evidence that it would? Now suppose someone suggested that you could close something outside to disable the mechanism causing the shock before you entered that door. What if you could stop the problem by closing the garage door first, or closing a gate, or anything else; that there was a way to stop that shock by changing your own choice of behavior. When you realized what that behavior was, the shock would be gone and you could relax as you enter your home in peace.

Before we go on, take the time to think about this and do the suggestions above. Take an inventory of your situation and yourself. Take your time and we’ll discuss this more in a little while. Let’s explore WHY we are actually agreeing to tolerate these hurtful situations in our lives and how to explore alternative choices for ourselves.