You put out into the universe will you want the universe to bring back to you I haven't been putting out what I want to come back. I was always taught about the golden rule, you do unto others what you want done to you. I never considered that to be something of a positive, more of how you wanted to avoid a negative but when I really think about it it's the same principle as you put out what you want to get back. You act towards others the way you want them to act towards you. It's such a simple thing really, so why am I just now at the age of 40 figuring this out?
The last year has been a very steep learning curve of me realizing how fallible I am and how my expectations don't match up with my behavior. How I expect others to treat me and yet I don't necessarily treat them the same way. For example I would expect a friend to say hi to me or come say hello, check up on me, text me and when they wouldn't I get all bent out of shape and think that we were friends when in reality I could've just as easily gone out of my way and said hello or texted or called but didn't. Somehow in my mind it feels different but only because I know what I'm thinking, I don't know what anyone else thinks and I don't know why I prescribe such negativity to everything.
I lost a great friend over the last year or so and for whatever reason I didn't think that I was very much in the wrong, when in reality I think I was at least 60% wrong. Now maybe she and I were destined to be friends and we were just ships passing in the night but in any event it didn't need to go the way it went and I'm learning that I need to take responsibility. I'm also learning that my actions have consequences, not like in actions have consequences, that sometimes I make really big mistakes but it doesn't change the fact that they are mistakes and I am to be held accountable. Perhaps my accountability lies in the fact that I lost a good friend because I was too shortsighted to really give a rats ass about anybody else but me. I put out into the universe that some people are too good for me and that I don't deserve their friendship and it makes things awkward and I put stumbling blocks up for me or them to purposely fall on and that's messed up, seriously messed up. Again another example of me putting out crappy stuff into the universe and somehow expecting something wonderful to come back and it doesn't work that way.
I think sometimes lessons come to us at various times in our life and we're not always ready to receive the information that the lesson brings. Kind of like a developmental stage where maybe your body is saying yeah I'm an adult but your mind isn't quite there yet. I don't think I've ever been in the space to really understand or hear the whole cause-and-effect on the universe outside of the scientific realm. So here I am, again age 40 realizing that if I want friends I have to be one and if I want someone to take a chance on me I have to take a chance on them. Sadly for my friend and I, I am learning that lesson too late but I'm learning it and hopefully it will spare me from future agonizing mistakes.
I'm not magically a perfect person living with the perfect understanding of how everything in the universe works but I think that I am a little more open to receiving what the universe has to offer me, and understanding that it's a two-way street...that I have to give back or pay it forward however, you want to look at it.
I don't get to be a passive observer I actually have to take an active role in life. I have spent the last 39 1/2 years being resistant to change and closed minded in the effects that change can have on my life...that I don't expect it to be an overnight success or change in philosophy. I'd like to think G.I. Joe has some sort of truism in this where "knowing is half the battle." I have an incredibly long way to go in my journey of self but I sure would like to think that I'm making forward progress even if that progress is horribly slow.
