Choosing Our Reality

Oooomph!

I experienced a very frustrating day yesterday. My web browser was extremely slow when it worked at all, and since I work from home on the web, I felt obligated to continue to deal with the slowness and inconsistency of its performance and service. Finally, the work day was finished, and my husband and I set out on a necessary shopping expedition; neither of us enjoy shopping at all. For me it is the experience in the shop that I find overwhelming - all of those choices, all of those energies. For my husband, it is the drive to and from the shop that fills him with frustration - all of those other drivers, so unpredictable and inexplicable and in his way!
Eventually, we were at my sister's house to pick up a very heavy load (in all senses of the phrase) of old photo albums that my deceased father had put together over many years. I have taken on the task of going through them to look for any photographs that we might decide to preserve. The rest of them will be discarded, which in itself is a bit sad - all of those moments, which my father sought to capture for us, for his non-existent grandchildren, for a posterity that frankly doesn't much care.
My sister and I do not get along these days - not even a little bit. I'm trying to choose my behaviour with her carefully, but no matter what choice I make with regards to how I will be when I am around her, I cannot control how she will be when she is around me. I have decided to remove myself from her immediate vicinity as much as possible. I did leave her house rather hastily yesterday, after expressions of incomprehension and frustration were exchanged. Sigh.

All of yesterday's frustrations left me with a bad feeling in my body and in my heart center. My husband and I were both feeling a bit fed up and hungry when we arrived home. We began to snap at each other. It seems almost inevitable now that we would have done so. I went off to be by myself quite quickly. I didn't want to be in that energy. And after a few moments of quiet reflection I realized what the day's experiences had brought to me. I wasn't angry with my husband. I had thought that I was - I certainly have had enough experience being angry with him that I could have slipped into it pretty easily - mostly through habit rather than anything else. But no, I wasn't angry with him. I just didn't want to be in that energy, in that experience. So I removed myself with as little drama as possible. My husband is a wise and balanced man; he didn't create any more drama than I did. But I realized that the whole day had been asking of me that I consciously choose my experiences, my reality.

The web browser wasn't working well at all, but interestingly, it didn't actually impact my ability to get my work done. Considering that I work remotely and use the web and telephone extensively, it's notable that I was able to finish the day's work without my employer feeling at all put out by my computer's inconsistent service. I wanted to surf the web in my free moments - I have a lot of free moments during the day when I have to be present and available for that incoming phone call, but am free to do as I choose until it comes. Usually I amuse and inform myself by surfing various web sites and reading various posts and so on. Yesterday I couldn't do that. Whenever I tried to do that, I met with a frustrating inability to do so. When I turned away from the frustration, to other things, to a lovely long exercise session, to a leisurely lunch with my husband in the brilliant sunshine pouring through our big south-facing windows, I thoroughly enjoyed the day. Yet I kept going back to the web browser that wouldn't work, experiencing intense frustration with it, and then turning away in despair of it. I wasn't trusting. I wasn't seeing and accepting my experience and choosing a better one; I was wallowing in and trying to force my way through an experience that did not hold any enjoyment for me. I didn't have to do that. I could have made a different choice in the moment.

We get to choose. We get to choose where we will place our focus, our energies and our consciousness. We often run through our moments, our days, in old patterns of duty and obligation, habit and routine, that entrap us in situations and energies that frustrate, displease and annoy us. It is of great value to us to look calmly, courageously and honestly at our reactions to these - why do they frustrate, displease and annoy? Why do I not get on well with my sister these days? And I choose to find the answer to that question, to delve until I have realized that truth of my feelings about spending time with her (I feel that it has something to do with feeling unseen as I am now, rather seen as I was to her many years ago, the younger sister struggling to get along in a rather alienating world). Yet, it is also true that I can choose to place myself in a reality that suits me in the moment. We don't have to struggle with a reality that does not suit our energy or our preferences.

We get to choose. We get to choose our reality.

We don't have to do it with high drama, guilt-trips or ultimatums. We just place ourselves where we choose to be and define the terms under which we will be there.

For example, I choose to walk today, even though the roads will be snow covered and slippery. I have made my choice and will follow it through on my terms - wearing good walking shoes and using my walking poles for extra stability. I'm looking forward to it, knowing what the conditions will be underfoot. I accept them. Yet I could as easily choose to stay indoors today, or to go skiing instead of walking. I get to choose.

Another example: I could easily feel obligated to go through all of the photographs - hundreds and hundreds of them - that my husband has kindly unloaded from the trunk of the car and brought into the house. I choose to go through those photographs, yet I might change my mind as I work through them; I might choose not to go through them all. Any obligation that I might feel is self-imposed, and this is always true. We are not tied to anything, trapped by anything, obligated in any way, but that we ourselves have created the tie, the entrapment, the obligation. We are free to choose our reality. That's actually pretty wonderful. I think I'll repeat myself....

We are free to choose our reality.

Speaking for myself only, I believe that I will exercise that freedom more and more consciously in the days to come.