Resolution - the Movie

A few blog entries ago, I mentioned a process that I 'invented' ... OK, stole, that I called Resolution.

I found my mind returning to the same thoughts over and over, rehashing decisions I had made or actions that I had taken, none of which were to my satisfaction. Did you ever get yourself into one of those spirals? You spend a lot of time debating decisions that were already long over with and couldn't be undone anyway.

Over the course of time, it dawned on me that I was spending a lot of time trying to come to terms with why I did this or that. This was time I could have spent on something constructive or at least whistling a happy tune. So I decided to do something about it.

In other words, I didn't have time for this crap.

This was maybe fifteen years ago and the fact that my father had died a few years before had nothing to do with all this angst. Like, I'm SO sure. But whatever the origin, I did what I always do, I studied the matter. Even all those years ago, you wouldn't believe all the self-help books out there with a sure-fire program to solve everything. So I helped myself to those aspects of a variety of programs that appealed to me or suited my purpose and ignored the rest.

Oddly, there was no self-flagellation or tough love among the recipe of rules I put together. That wasn't the point, I just wanted to be done with this stuff and not have it popping into what's left of my mind.

I can't really go into all the specific devices here, for all I know some of what I stole was copyrighted but I can summarize it for you in the name I selected for the program: Resolution.

I had to resolve the issues to the point where I no longer thought about them. Just to make you feel better, there was no murder or mayhem involved, it was job decisions, personal relationships, perceived insults, you know, childish junk like that. Boy, I can hear people signing off all the way from here.

So, I started by writing them all down.

That's a throwaway line that really translates into a great deal of work over a long period of time. I had to learn to recognize which issues were the ones contaminating my thoughts. Some were common and others rare. Some, many actually, were 'resolved' simply by writing them all out and staring at them. It was almost as if the act of writing them down had dumped them from the recirculating hash that masquerades as my thoughts. Catharsis, I suppose.

Others required actions. I learned by analyzing the patterns of what I had written that I actually wanted to be liked. How stupid is that? You may have noticed that I put that sentence in the past tense. People are either going to like you or not and it's almost invariably because of a reason of their own, not some action that you took or words that you said.

In Hamlet, Polonius (that's him lying dead at Hamlet's feet) said, "...to thine own self be true..." Well, he was right, you know. If you mess around with your decisions because you're concerned about what others may think of you, then you'll find yourself trying to figure it all out years later. They're your decisions and it's your life. What others may or may not think is the business of politicians, it has no place in real life.

Regardless of which decision you make, about the same number of people (not the same people necessarily) will 'like' you as did before. And as I said, likely for their own reasons. So please yourself. The only person you have to justify yourself to is YOU.

The problem with being so slow to 'resolve' my issues is that some of the people I wanted to speak to had disappeared from my life or had died. There are many things I would like to say to my mother and father for example. But that ain't gonna happen.

It's remarkable how much time I got back by means of this program. After I had spoken to those I could and fixed or attempted to fix those things I could, suddenly I had brain cycles at my disposal that were not available previously. Heaven knows there are few enough of those as it is. Plus, there is the added attraction of knowing what to look for and avoiding them. This was clearly another of those opportunities for testing that I've spoken of before. The release of pressure allows a machine, like the human mind, to operate at a more optimum speed with more optimum efficiency.

Remember the title of this blog? Past is Prologue. Put the past in it's proper place, for in our lives it is only the prologue. The good stuff is still ahead of us.