Are you Afraid?
The instant I awoke I was thinking about how life is a game, let's say Monopoly. You roll the dice and make your choices. Life throws you potential problems and gives your choices. You make a choice and you deal with the consequences. The whole time there are other players and there are rules. Some players follow the rules, some cheat or quit the game in a tantrum because they don't get their way. This happens in life, too. We do with what we get the best we can. Some of us always follow the rules while others continue to cheat or whine their way through the game, making problems for those who follow the rules. Eventually you have those who tell the cheaters, "Either play by the rules or we aren't going to play with you anymore". The cheaters don't understand this because they have already written new rules, rules that say their cheating is "right". They get angry and tell the rule followers that they are not playing by the "right rules" and the game ends between the two. Now we have two games: the original game and the "new" game played by the cheaters. This pattern continues with new games being made up as those who can't or won't follow the rules break off. Eventually you have millions of games being played and no one really knows what the original rules were. Who is right? Who is wrong? It depends on what game you are playing.
This is Life: a bunch of games being played independently of one another. People get hurt and confused and lost. How does one play a game such as this? You find groups of people playing games by similar rules to your own and stick with that group. They may not have all the same rules but they have enough of the same ones where you can agree to disagree on a few of them. However, when someone starts playing by their own rules or different ones from the group you face the challenge of either making up new rules to keep them in your game or turning them away because they refuse to follow yours.
In a game there is always the intent to win. Winning being you or your team makes it to the finish line first. In life, this idea of winning has changed. Sometimes winning is just making it to the end, doesn't matter if you are first or last. Sometimes winning is helping others to the end. It all depends on the group and the game they are playing.
What happens when you keep losing? What happens when your team's rules don't include cheating or doing underhanded things like lying, stealing, breaking the law, and manipulating loved ones? Your team stops trusting you and eventually has to decide if you are going to stay on the team or not. What determines whether you stay on the team? Your choices. You know the group rules: are you going to break them? Or are you going to step up and following them like you should?
There is no wrong answer, no mistake, just a choice in the end. However, you must deal with the consequences of your choice and so must your team. If you can't handle the consequences, don't make the choice. Simple, right? Not if you are living out of fear.
What is fear? According to dictionary.com, "fear is a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid". The part in bold is what I want you to focus your attention upon. So many times the fear is not real, it is imagined. Fear is a physical response meant to keep our bodies alive as long as possible. However, fear has developed into a mental state and a spiritual one. We now fear failure; failure of our goals, hopes and dreams. It is not physically harmful to us, but we see it as such. This is a human characteristic; not innate to us as spiritual beings.
Either way, fear is destructive. Making decisions out of fear can ruin a person's life. You see, fear takes away one's control of their life. It steals it away and the effect is compounding. Eventually, everything you do is controlled by fear. You are lost and terrified. Everything you do seems to be backfiring on you. Why? Because you are terrified of something and you refuse to confront it. By refusing to confront it, you make it grow and give it more and more power over your life. The solution is simple: confront your fear and your fear will cease to control you.
For me, all these thoughts came about because I have been struggling to understand the decisions and motivations of one of my family members. I understand now. I have been there. For me to judge them harshly would be hypocritical. All of us has allowed fear to run our lives. It is part of life and being human. I have things I fear as well. When confronted with those things, would I face them? I believe so. I have learned that if I don't then those things never go away and sit on my shoulders like the heaviest of weights. But has this family member learned that? No. It is their lesson. They must learn it on their own. There is nothing I can say or do that will change that. It truly is in God's (their) hands.
I think that is the hardest thing for me to accept - and anyone who has been in a similar situation. We have learned the lesson, we see the danger, we try and help by telling the person, "Don't do this......do this......" The other person is insulted. They see our offer as us telling them they failed, they messed up. And remember, they are terrified of failure and they refuse to confront that fear. No one likes to confront failure or accept it for that matter, it makes them wrong. Of course they are going to ignore our advice - we don't understand, we have proven that through our words and our actions - we see their failure and that is what they can't confront, they fear it. So then, we represent the fear they are unwilling to confront. We might as well be invisible to them.
I am invisible to my loved one as long as I represent that which they cannot confront in their life. Until they can confront it, I will be a shadow they run from, a worry they just can't quite figure out. They will play their game and I will play mine. Maybe one day we will both play the same game again, but until then all I can do is watch and pray they learn to confront their fears.
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