Choosing Painful New Paths That Just Might Lead to Joy
Some of the hardest things that I’ve ever done have involved a sharp, painful turn in a new direction. If I didn’t make a needed change, another person pushed me hard. I had to do it.
In a lot of situations, it seemed like someone was forcing me into some gawd-awful situation. Maybe they laid me off (a.k.a., fired me). Maybe someone broke off a passionate relationship. However, if I step back and look at the circumstances that led up to the heave-ho, it often comes down to my own actions. At least partially.
In one situation, there were lots of quarrels with a boyfriend who was not behaving respectfully or with deep love. We’d been together for several years. There was a lot of romance and escapades along the way. I pressed the guy so flat against the wall that he had no choice but to break things off. He saved me the trouble of doing it myself.
This isn’t unique, I know. And not to be Pollyanna-ish about it, but if he hadn’t gotten rid of me, I never would have met the love of my life.
One of my journalism jobs ended when a new boss decided to replace me with someone else — presumably because he’d worked with the person in the past and didn’t like my work. This came after I had received stellar work reviews from my former manager for several years.
On the other hand, the new boss also had seen how I wanted to expand my work, do more writing, and there was the occasional phone call related to my creative writing pursuits.
When I was kicked to the curb, I received a nice severance payment. The nest egg made me feel comfortable enough to do what I really wanted: work as an independent writer and editor.
The more life goes on, the more I’m not willing to wait for someone else to make the tough decisions for me. Takes too long. And I see a couple of ways to do this, which might be helpful to you as well.
The first involves dealing with fear, imagining the consequences of severing ties. Quite by chance, I read something last night by Anne Lamott that “spoke” to me about this: “The teacher Adyashanti said that the part of you that sees that you are afraid isn’t afraid.” It’s from her book “Dust, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage,” which focuses on faith, personal demons, and marriage, with a large spoonful of humor.
The point is: the part of our minds that recognizes our fear contains the courage we need. By tapping into it, we can gird ourselves for the uncomfortable experience of significant change.
The second ingredient that goes into hard decisions involves acting with kindness — moving away from people respectfully, without challenging them but remaining honest. I’m not suggesting the sort of honesty that involves spilling your guts and playing the blame game. But if called upon to explain yourself, find a quiet way to be truthful.
This understanding has helped me over the last few months on a few different levels. For example, I’ve dialed back my communication with friends who were hurtful and annoying.
On a separate front, a script that people raved about in the sci-fi genre wasn’t getting picked up. And I realized that the only way for people to see my vision, to fully get engrossed in the world, required me to take the time to write a novel, even though the process is so much longer than writing scripts — two or three years vs. a matter of months. This involved finding more distance between myself and some other people.
Upshot is, I’m energized by this new book, which is a sequel to my sci-fi novel “The Juice.” I hope that all of you that read sci-fi, and even some of you who don’t, will really enjoy it.
Granted, making these giant leaps is very tricky. But they’re worth it, for me. Because it takes too much time for someone else to trigger changes that I really should be making myself.
