In my youth, I craved excitement, adventure, the new, the fast, the different. As I have grown, my desires have changed, as I search for calmness, a wider perspective, a more balanced alignment of my soul.
Yet peace is elusive, and I think I am beginning to understand why. It may be that my requirements for peace are driven by my ego, and not by a sense of reality.
Growing up in a somewhat dysfunctional home, I developed a sense that in order to find peace, I had to have control over everything. Chaos was an ever frequent visitor, and as a child, chaos robbed me of one of my needs, a need for certainty.
In my quest for control, I learned several skills, or behaviors, that sustained me as a child, but as an adult have caused pain for myself and those around me.
I learned to withdraw from uncertainty, which creates strain in my relationships as I fail to open up, be honest and share my true feelings.
I learned to manipulate people; to change their actions towards me in an effort to protect myself. This is something I desperately try to avoid as an adult, yet I find myself doing this as a reflex and I wonder if people really like me, or the manipulations that they see affected in my day to day behaviors. This creates a profound sense of uncertainty.
I learned that in order to achieve peace, I had to avoid risk, which has resulted in massive pain for myself and my family as I wasted almost a decade of my life working in a situation which did not benefit us.
I learned to live with the pain of not living my purpose, trading a potential but uncertain future for a certain but painful now.
As an adult, I continue to struggle with these child-formed beliefs of control, which are fantasies not realities. This behavior continually deprives me of a possible sense of peace, one that is rooted in faith rather than fear, courage rather control, and possibility rather than perfectionism.
Peace, I have found, is far more elusive than I had imagined.
And it is a difficult journey.
-- Dr. Alan Barnes
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