On Can't, and Can

I popped into a coffee bar the other day to say hello to somebody whom I had promised to visit, who works there. I wasn't really prepared for what ensued.

I had met this person as an acquaintance of one of the folks I know in the rooms (a recovering multi-addict/alcoholic). For several weeks, now, I've been getting streamed data about the living arrangements for both of them. One of them will see me, their mouth opens, and it all comes out.

My acquaintance owns a horse farm and lives in the main house on the property. Coffee Bar Person found themself in dire straits later in life and landed on the doorstep of the farm owner - homeless, broke, broken - and ended up boarding in a bedroom of an auxiliary house on the farm in exchange for farm chores.

The auxiliary farm house is populated entirely by active spiraling addicts and alcoholics, save for Coffee Bar Worker. CBW and Farm Owner are both purportedly sober, but sure act like they're dry if so.

I sat through a barrage of about an hour's length, listening to a detailed account of how buried and impossible the situation was, to get out of. Interwoven into the situation were details of choices they both had made, that had effectively closed doors for other possibilities. And now, whenever I see either of them, I get an earful of how they have no choices, and are stuck in a miserable situation.

If I'm ever able to extract myself from the trees, and look at the forest, and look at my forest, this makes me realize that what was bothering me most was a pattern, and it went like this:

Blah, blah, blah, BUT, so I can't... and woe is me!(repeat cycle).

I wondered why it felt so painful, so hopeless, to listen to the details, even though I was trying to keep apart from them. And after a few days of letting it soak in, waiting for a bubble to surface in my thoughts, I think one did.

Back to my need to get myself into the moment. It's almost creepy-scary how these themes come back around, as soon as we slide toward complacency.

What my take-home lesson became, out of that barrage of seeming hopelessness, is that the focus was entirely on what was, and what had failed, and what doors were now closed. When I look back to the content, I realize there was a total absence of letting go of what doesn't work -no focus on looking for what may work. What a powerful lesson.

Enchained by the past, projecting failure into the future, not looking at the present, to see the next right step.

Hmmmmmmm. Do I do this??

Now, maybe this seems like an obvious, boring, insignificant entry, today. But, I write it out, because I need to see it, I need to read it, and I need to go think about it.

Simplicity, for me, is often so deceiving. That which appears simple is often what needs the most inspection.

And besides, this is the fourth post I wrote for yesterday; the first three didn't sit right. Executive Rules prohibited me from publishing them...

-The Traveler