journey of life | David M Masters

Watching the People You Love Ruin Their Lives

You love them with all your heart, yet they make choices and decisions that bring discomfort, despair, and chaos into their life. There’s little worse than watching the people you love ruin their lives. You want to help. You give your input and suggestions, still, they insist on being their own worst enemy.

It breaks your heart every time they do it, yet you cannot prevent them from exercising their own free will and living the life they were meant to live.

What? “the life they were meant to live?” That’s right. Everyone is on their own individual journey. Each one is different and different people are destined to have different experiences, in a sense to play out the hand they were dealt in such a way to get them where their life’s journey leads.

You know, in your life, you’ve made bad decisions which have led to uncomfortable consequences. But didn’t you learn from those experiences? Weren’t there critical pivot points in your life which made you evaluate your decision-making process, change your life, and make better decisions in the future?

This is the process, and you can’t do it for anyone else. This may make you feel like you’re watching the people you love ruin their lives, but you’re not. You are not watching them ruin their lives, what you’re doing is watching the people you love make their own way through life, just as you’re making your own way through yours.

We’ve all learned key values based on our individual experiences, such as being a people pleaser or keeping up with the Joneses. Taking the easy way out, procrastination, giving up too soon or holding on too long. Asserting your superiority or not valuing others. You know all the right answers and everyone else is wrong. Not speaking your peace, or not being open to new ideas.

You know from your own experience that it’s not a good thing to bury the past and ignore it, to judge others harshly, to engage in hate speech, to think that what you want is all that matters, or to hold onto expectations so tightly that if something doesn’t go your way, your whole world collapses.

You’ve learned valuable life lessons, like having a bad experience doesn’t mean that everything associated with a similar focal point of your bad experience (stocks, cars, investments, mate choice, religion, social cliques, pets, children, relatives, etc.) is patently also potentially “bad.” You know better to throw the baby out with the bathwater. You’ve learned this over time.

You know if you feel like you can’t do it, you probably can. You’ve learned to be open to new ideas because you might end up making your own life easier or better. You’ve discovered that cutting yourself some slack, not judging yourself harshly, and taking time to relax and smell the roses are not only beneficial but necessary for living a good life.

You’ve learned that not all advice from people you care for and trust is not always the best advice.

Failure is not fatal. If you fall off the horse, you dust yourself off and get ready to give it another go. You’ve learned that you cannot give to others or love with all your heart if your cup is empty.

You’ve learned to graciously accept assistance if someone offers to lend a hand, and to avoid being seen as narcissistic by others.

You’ve learned to accept others as they are, where they are on their own individual journey. You love them, you let you make their own way, and you bless them as they learn from their own experiences.

Many of the most valuable lessons in life are learned by living life, by making mistakes, and learning from them. Why would you deny anyone that part of their journey?

The people you love have to find and make their own way, to discover all these things on their own. You may share your own story as an interesting anecdote, but do not preach to nor condemn them for having the courage to make their own decisions, and do not coddle them when they suffer the consequences.

This is their life. Honor them.

Yes, it can be hard to watch them go through it. You can pray for them, bless, them, love them, but do not judge them, for they are doing the best they can with what they have, as so have you.

Have We Met Somewhere Before?

There are times when you meet up with someone in this life who at the outset seems so familiar, even though he or she is a perfect stranger, and you might even ask, “Have we met somewhere before?” What is going when you feel so strongly that you know this person?

Logically, you know you have never crossed paths with this person, but still, there is the strange and undeniable familiarity or connection.

On one side of it, this phenomenon is the idea that this person reminds you of someone with whom you’ve shared a connection in the past and you can project those very same feelings on a perfect stranger who is similar enough to trigger your latent emotional feelings.

This is common when we’ve loved someone who is not present in our life at the moment. A friend, a family member, a teacher, mentor, or someone we admired from afar. Maybe they moved away, or you just ended up on different journeys and drifted apart, or they may have passed on. It may have been long ago enough that you may not even remember them consciously.

Still, there’s a part of you that misses them, and your subconscious triggers all that connection and projects it on someone. And, Bam! There you are. This is a blessing because it honors the original person, the effect he or she had on your life, you go right back into that state and it feels very good, but it’s a little socially awkward.

Then, there’s the “other side” of the have-we-met-before phenomenon.

I don’t know how you feel about all this, but buckle-up buttercup because we’re goin’ for a ride…

There are a great many “other reasons” you feel like you may have met this person before, and the likelihood that you may know this person deeply and/or intimately from beyond your present experience.

“Oh, no, not the, ‘I know you from a past-life,’ thing!”

Yes, it sounds so romantically trite, nonetheless, this is a real thing. The higher part of you, remembers experiences from lives you’ve lived before, and it recognizes those with whom you’ve shared these experiences with.

Just like this life, past lives have had both good and bad experiences, so the feelings that you feel for this person might not be good. This person may have been connected to a highly-charged tragic event in a past life and those negative feelings are breaking through in this reality.

If you have met before in a previous life, there’s a good chance that you may have unfinished business to tend to in this go-round.

How do you know if you know someone from a past life?

First, there is the knowingness of recognition, with deep emotional impact, followed by an initial (albeit you might think of it as silly) idea that pops into your head, indicating you must have known them in a past life. If you’ve been well-socially-programmed, you quickly discard the idea of having a past-life connection because that would be ridiculous.

When reuniting with someone from a past-life, you feel this deep connection which goes beyond any logical explanation because you feel as if you’ve met a long-lost friend, someone, you cared deeply for but haven’t seen in years. This overwhelming flood of emotion could come accompanied by tears, extreme joy, and/or a compulsion to embrace because it has been a long time, at least one lifetime since you’ve been together.

They say that the eyes are the window to the soul, and you are likely to understand the meaning of this when you look into the eyes of someone you’ve shared adventures with in a past life. There is an uncanny instant knowingness and trust that you have shared experiences and you get a feeling, if not a glimpse, of this feeling of shared experiences. This shared trust allows you to drop human pretenses and feel like you can be open and honest with this person because you share this vast history with him or her.

As you reconnect with this person, you may find that you both have particular fascinations about geographic locations around the world and specific time periods. It’s likely that you have shared experiences in these locations in a past life. Your souls remember, even if you’re unable to consciously remember in this life.

As you get to know your fellow traveler (which happens very rapidly, if you’ve traveled together before) you realize that you understand, trust, and know each other more deeply than other people you have met in just this present life.

When you interact and spend time in each other’s presence time seems not to exists, you can share and chat with each other for what seems like minutes when hours may have slipped by because you’re more deeply connected outside the timeline of this life.

Even though you may be miles apart, the connection persists without any degradation due to time and space, and when you are able to reconnect again, it is as no time has passed and you just pick up right where you left off.

And who knows, you may even be a part of the same Cosmic Speakeasy, where you and a number of other soul mates, rendezvous and commiserate in between lives.

Just saying.

Where Are You On the Bus?

Ever feel like life’s pushing you out into the street in front of a moving bus? There’s one sure way to see that doesn’t happen to you and that’s to get off the street and get behind the wheel of the bus. If you’re feeling like life’s giving you the runaround, it’s because you’re not in the driver’s seat.

You might think, “Okay, I’ll drive the bus.” So you get behind the wheel and at the first stop light, you get distracted by someone or something at the intersection and go to check it out, before you know it your bus takes off without you. It takes a certain amount of attention and diligence to stay behind the wheel of the bus. Driving your bus is impossible if you can’t stay in the driver’s seat most of the time. If you can’t do that, the best you can ever hope to be is a passenger.

As most of us are passengers, someone else is doing the driving and we just go along with wherever we go or whatever happens. If bored of the ride, we could opt to get off the bus and look for a different bus. In this case you may have control of which bus your on, but not as much control as you might have being the driver.

It can be intimidating, if you’ve never driven you bus before. I think most of us wonder if we’re going to be any good at driving the bus once we get in the driver’s seat. It’s okay. Even many of us who spend a lot of time in the driver’s seat, like to take a break and let someone do the driving for a while, and a few are driving instructors.

If you’re upset about the journey your bus is on, feeling bad about it, complaining about it, accusing others of changing up the trip, or waiting too long at a particular stop along the way, is not going to change a thing. If you are feeling negative emotions about your journey, it’s a clear indication that you’re stuck in the back of the bus. It’s not assigned seating. You sat in the seat you’re in, so you best stop moping about it and start moving forward in the bus at the next stop.

As you move closer to the front of the bus, you don’t even have to be the driver, and you can get the advantage of seeing things that are coming up. You are a lot more excited about your journey and its potentials from this vantage point. You feel way better than being in the back of the bus, where you can’t really see anything but the other passengers in front of you and what your bus is passing.

If you’re not feeling so good about your journey, the first thing to do is to take a look at where you are on the bus and at the next opportunity move. Raise your awareness and look at your journey from a different perspective. That may be all you need to feel so much better about your journey, but I have to warn you, the allure of the driver’s seat is much greater from the front seats of the bus.

You can do a pretty good job of discerning where someone sits on the bus. Just go into a restaurant where a tour bus is parked outside and walk around the tables eavesdropping on each table. You will find people grouped together talking among themselves about their journey. The ones from the front of the bus are focused on all the good and exciting things, while the groups from the back of the bus are complaining and not very happy.

If you’re stuck in the, “Woe is me,” attitude, it’s hard to expect anything better. But once you’ve made the decision to change your position on the bus, your attention is looking forward on the bus, looking for a better seat at the next stop, not focused on you dismal seat.

Sure, stuff happens, and you find yourself sandwiched between a less than fragrant passenger and another one who is trying to sell you something. Just play along, while keeping your attention focused on a better position in the bus. Be polite, but do not fully engage in an intense battle of wits with either of these people. If you fully engage your attention and begin defending your position, you’ll be surprised when you notice that you’ve spent our efforts arguing (or feeling bad about being stuck here, or just pretending to be asleep) through several stops, missing opportunities to shift your position and moving to a better seat.

This works in all stations of life. You might be stuck in a seat in a college class, and suddenly decide you no longer want to feel like a rat in a cage anymore. Even with the awareness that your family and friends might like your decision to dropout and jump off at the next stop. You’re ready to start driving your own bus. That’s what one young man did and he was a billionaire by the time he was 31. That was his name? Oh, yeah, Bill Gates. You may have heard of him.

There are many stories of regular people, just like you and me, who were stuck on a bus but once it occurred to them there might be a better way, decided to start looking at ways to get behind the wheel.

Isn’t it time, now, for you to get behind the wheel, or at least think about changing seats?