“Oh Woe is Me.” A phrase which incites sorrow and misfortune for oneself and the basis for today’s message from the Animal Realm.
Previously sharing the lack of need for pity in the article, It’s a pity to pity. today the animals shared how we can retire self-pity and replace it with self-awareness.
Self-pity is a place we have all visited at some moment in our lives with some choosing to stay longer than others.
Self-pity and self-awareness are different levels of introspection, both a connection with ourselves on an emotional and mental level. What we see and do during that connection is the key to our experience.
As with all life experiences, we have an opportunity to discover more about ourselves when being introspective but pity has been shown to be an empty gesture, although it does bring us straight to the issue, or rather the emotion attached to the issue, which is fantastic. It then focuses in on that emotion and creates a permanent, immoveable challenge. Our destination has been reached and, knowing no different, we consider ourselves comfortable staying.
Self-awareness goes on a journey. We explore other areas of ourselves and our environment. Sometimes getting side-tracked while encompassing different perspectives en-route, we reach our destination fresh and with options. We have armed ourselves with information, insight and knowledge en-route to our destination and the emotion is no longer the permanent, immoveable challenge it could have been if we’d gone straight there. The alternatives encountered en-route can leave us feeling uncomfortable staying permanently with challenging emotions.
It may help absorb this insight more by considering your emotional challenge as a weed in a garden. Is your focus on not wanting the weed there? Or is your awareness on how that weed interacts with your garden and what it brings to it’s environment?
A weed is only a wild plant considered to be outside it’s surroundings. Who has defined these surroundings? We have.
A dandelion, once considered a valuable plant, attracts insects to balance the ecosystem and bring nutrients to the soil. A lawn, which was once a dandelion metropolis, is now grass. Dandelions were widely cultivated for medicinal, therapeutic and nutritional usage. White clover, now considered a weed, protects the soil, has edible flowers and improves nitrogen in the soil. Many other so-called ‘weeds’ provide food, nutrients and balance to us and the environment around them.
A plant does not consider a growing environment ‘wrong.’ That plant has a purpose. To grow, nourish, reseed and regrow. It does not see boundaries within a natural growing environment.
So, by considering our emotions and challenges as the weeds, we have options (as we always do). A choice to sit and focus on the weed as invasive and unwanted, compare our garden to Mrs Jones’s manicured lawn 3 doors down or embrace the weed as an interactive, nourishing part of our garden which is helpi
ng us and our environment flourish?
We always have the opportunity to re-evaluate what is considered a weed, or challenge, by others. We set the boundaries for growth.
Weeds come and go, challenges come and go. Each bring options for stagnancy or growth.
Self-pity is one option, self-awareness another.