There are 2 types of emotional pain. One is pointless and the other not. One can lead us to another way of living and the other to a place from which it is hard for us to see a way back. Pain can be a great motivator. Never underestimate its worth.

Pointless pain is wrapped up in personal pride and the refusal to see the linitations of ones own character. When I want to slug it out with fear and trembling then I usually suffer more than I would have. People are rarely smart when it comes to emotional pain. They tend to roll the dice and take a chance with it. Sometimes this works and others it doesn’t. It’s what you do when it doesn’t that changes things. Pain can be useful. I try not to lump it straight in the ‘no good’ category.

In our search to move on and change we are often asked to become like ‘blank pages’. The sentiment is that upon a blank page a new chapter can be written in our lives. The problem is, that we already have much ‘writing’ all over us and to start anew seems like a tall order.What would it mean to do such a thing?

At time in our life’s, usually when we have been burned enough or are crushed enough, there appears an opportunity to change direction. Sometimes this opportunity does not ‘feel’ very good. Sometimes it might ‘feel’ great. It is not laid down in stone either way. But when we can say that we will listen, when we say that we will consider, when we say that we cannot go on with what we are doing – we are already re-writing our own story. We are already changing history in that we will see it from a different angle. This is our blank page.

Reflection is an elusive art with me. It is rarely that I sit down and come to a conclusion about something. Rather a decision or understanding is within me and takes it time to surface and be fully known.

The conversation between the ‘Architect’ and ‘Neo’ in the Matrix trilogy went something like this.  Neo thought that he had to make a decision about why he was in that place at that time and what he had to do. But the Architect told him that he had already made the decision,  it was now up to him to find out why he had made it?

I often know where I am going and what I want. Allowing it to become the truth is something else. Anxiety is sometimes the knowledge of what is to be done and sometimes the conflict about what is to be done. These things are part of living and shouldn’t be treated as illness.