Your Experience

“Comparison is the thief of joy” - Theodore Roosevelt

I was initially writing about presence.  Not necessarily about presence itself, but what it looks like when we aren’t mentally present.  The reality is we all are physically present all of the time (are we, though?),  but we aren’t always mentally present.  But I think comparison has more to do with presence than we think. 

When we aren’t mentally present, our entire experience is living either in the past  (the majority of the time) or the future.  What happens when you are here presently comparing your past or future to your current experience or an expectation of what you think “should be”?  Fear. Depression.  Anxiety.  Worry.

I often look at things on a continuum.  And most of the time people would think that depression is on one end and anxiety at the other.  I don’t believe that’s the case.  

The opposite of depression is elation.  The opposite of anxiety is apathy, and when we don’t mentally live in the present moment, we ride this exhaustive rollercoaster of emotions over and over and over again.  

When we live mentally present, we can see things and can begin to acknowledge things as they are and we can see and acknowledge that every experience is a little bit of every emotion, and that’s okay.  What’s not okay is not integrating the experience, hanging on to the emotion, and thus allowing it to stain your perceptive system.  Because what happens here is 5 years from now when you experience that emotion, your perceptive system is looking for an experience to match it up with.  So to protect you, it will replay the experience over and over and over and over again.  Recruiting all of the same neurochemistry, stress hormones, behaviors, etc. from the past to protect you.  

Integrating a scary, fearful, or emotionally charged experience like we are all experiencing today, is not the same as stuffing it down, distracting yourself from it, not acknowledging it and “compartmentalizing” it.  Integrating an experience is looking at all sides of the experience, finding the gratitude and grace in the uncertainty, and choosing to live somewhere in the middle.  Neither elated or depressed, neither anxious or apathetic.  Choosing love, and understanding, appreciation. 

Because the reality is, we are all human beings.  We are all going to experience every emotion imaginable.  It’s how we choose to live our current experience... are we comparing it to the past, future, or a made up expectation of how things “should be”?  Or are we choosing to see them just as they are from a place of understanding, love and appreciation?  How is this time serving you?