burdens

i keep thinking about that conversation i had yesterday.

i've had some pretty intense conversations in my life,
and this one ranked right up there.

and i keep thinking how he didn't want to 'burden' people
with the story.

i wonder why we don't see that our stories help other people.
i wonder why we think we need to keep this stuff to ourselves.

i keep thinking about some of the stuff he said.
and some of the places he was stuck.

i turn it around to myself and try to figure out how it
fits with my own stuff i struggle with.

the biggest thing i see this morning is how stuck he was on
past mistakes.

and no, i don't know what they were.

and yeah, they could be tough stuff to let go of.

but whatever they were......they were past. they were mistakes.

past.
past.
past.
mistakes.

just that.
mistakes.

just that.

too much holdin' on of the past.

yes, i think we have to make some sort of peace with the past.
i do.
i also think that waiting for complete peace is gonna be too
long a wait. you'll lose the now.

i think maybe i thought i'd get there.

yeah, right.

some days i have a lotta peace about the past.
some days not.

lookin' at my friend, i saw what a pit that was to fall into
and get out of.

the focus is now.
taking what i can learn from the past.....and using it.
not crippling myself with it.

big big difference.

what if you did that when you were in math class?

you took a class and made a buncha mistakes and goofed up a
lotta the problems and got it all wrong.
and then you took the next level class and said 'i can't
do this, cause i goofed up everything, got it all wrong,
and i suck.'

huh????

how about figurin' out what the goof up was, figurin' out
what worked and takin' that and building on that.

isn't that what we do with stuff we learn like math???

why not life???

he shared his deep deep pain and touched me.
and is makin' me think.

i'm so glad he 'burdened' me.
if only all burdens were like this.

hmmmmmmmmm............
are they???