I often wonder how the universe works it all? There are so many phrases to describe the tendency for the universe/world/God/random events to bombard us all at once with sheer shit. When it rains, it pours. The straw that broke the camel’s back. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. They say God doesn’t give us more than we can handle, God must think I’m badass./. The list goes on…
Why is this? Why does it seem to come in sudden torrents rather than spread out sprinkles interlaced with sunny dry spots to give us time to regroup? If God is in charge, it seems He might offer a gentler approach to life lessons (if these are even life lessons?). If God is NOT in charge, it would seem sheerly by the odds alone, these humongous boulders thrown at a person would naturally be spaced out among the lovely flowers being tossed in our hair. At the least a 50/50, right? Like a pattern of flower, boulder, flower, boulder, flower, boulder. Or maybe even more random, but still more evenly matched like flower, flower, boulder, boulder. flower, boulder, etc.
I’m no mathematician, so I don’t have a deep grasp of odds and averages, statistics and ratios, but, it DOES seem the natural balance of things would average out. Why on earth would it ever be like this: Woman finds out husband is cheating, husband leaves woman for affair, woman finds out she has cancer, woman’s father passes away unexpectedly, woman is now going through a divorce, woman breaks down, woman loses job. Is it just a snowball effect of the gravity of life events? Is it the Law of Attraction where the first negative struggle creates negative energy that temporarily takes over the woman’s mind/life and draws more to it? Is it that simple? If so, I’d think the Law of Attraction actively could counteract itself if the woman in this scenario began to refuse to take on the negatives of her situation and thus, would stop that gravitational snowball from continuing to drag her down the mountain of woes by her hair.
I’ve watched The Secret. It was so convincing that I really believed it. I did a little test run and it actually seemed to work. I was determined to be and think positive, thus negating all the yukky that seemed to have been drawn to me throughout my life. The more positive I insisted on being/forcing myself to think regardless of reality, the more nothing changed really. Nothing changed except that I got much more disappointed in the negative that kept coming at me in spite of my positive thinking and hopeful beyond reality outlook…just more disappointed than I would have been otherwise had I not convinced myself that I could actually somehow control random events in my life!
Now, I’m feeling like I somehow brought that rape onto myself by not being positive enough; validating that if I’d tried even harder to be perfect for mother, maybe she would have loved me; if I’d been more “positive” when (before or after!?) my ex cheated, lied, and abused me, I could have stopped that series of events … On and on and on…
I’m all for positive thinking, I really do see how it benefits most and seeing the glass half full rarely hurts anyone or makes things worse, but I also believe there’s a cap on how far one can go with that. We need to be mindful of how much responsibility we place on people for other people’s random behaviors and moods, partlicularly for survivors.
No one needs to believe they created their own cancer, stroke, abuse, financial ruin, or rape because they “invited” it in to themselves by struggling to stay positive and full of faith in the world even as it showers down painful chaos out of the blue! And especially not after the fact!!
