stumbling blocks into building blocks: point zero

It is pretty amazing to think that the things that we perceive as blocking our way to progress are often the very thing that hold for us the most potential for growth.

Seeing the stumbling block for what it really is, or being willing to be willing to see it in another way is where we start.

I was married once before and the period when that marriage was in free-fall, leading up to the divorce and the period of re-orienting afterwards was something I experienced as being painful and confusing. A swamp of bitterness. I will be the first one to admit that regardless of the situation I was in, I made regrettable decisions, and a lot of it falls on me. Of all the things I learned, the one that has stayed with me the most and given me the most help, was that no matter how rough things felt, my inability to see and embrace the situation for what it really was was my greatest stumbling block. Not the ended marriage, not the fights and the screaming, not the period of rootlessness that followed, not the nightmares, not the anxiety, but not getting the clue that I had all that I needed right in front of me, but just hadn't decided to wrap my arms around that difficult situation and say: I am going to wrestle you until you tell me your name, give me your wisdom.

The next part of it was my being,  who I was, and who I was willing to be in relationship to that painful situation. I had done so much whining about how terrible things were. One day on the phone I was talking to a friend of mine whose response to my tearful and repetitive question "what should I do?" was "stop being an asshole." He was right, actually, although at the time I felt really insulted. I was making a tremendous deal out of being confused, and I had scripted a complete identity for myself that was defined by this stumbling block. And this way of defining myself brought me illness and poverty because when people looked at me, all they saw was this identity that I had created, newly divorced, bitter, afraid, crazy.

Had I known then how to redesign my operating system, that pulse of identity that we all have and either works for us or against us, and turn its frequency to one of gratitude and happiness, alot would have been different.

Of course, I wouldn't have acquired the mastery through the subsequent period of nonsense, for which I'm grateful, but, well, you know.