Peace, be still.
My first post is an expression of my struggle to master the voice inside me that tells me to constantly be active in pursuits of various sorts. These pursuits may be academic degrees, business ideas, or acquiring things which I momentarily perceive to be vital to my current state of happiness, such as a certification or an item of leisure.
I often get myself so worked up in this frenzy of self-imposed urgency for action that I eventually come to realize that I am, in fact, achieving nothing more than the undesirable feat of spinning my wheels and draining my energy.
This post creation is therefore an exercise in stillness, whereby letting my thoughts flow through me and express themselves through the movement of my fingers they are satisfied and released, thus liberating my spirit from a feeling of impending restlessness and a state of "not-yet-itis."
In my training to become a nurse I learned that adding the suffix -itis to the end of a word was used to indicate inflammation or irritation of whatever was represented as the prefix, or first part of the word. Therefore, tonsillitis would indicate inflammation of the tonsils and nephritis refers to the inflammation of the kidneys. By the way, nephrology nursing is my specialty and the renal or kidney system is my favorite body system. The kidneys are really amazing and play a much more vital role in our health than most people realize-so please take care of yours! I digress.
Back to "not-yet-itis." One thing that I've realized about myself and others around me is the delay in allowing the self to feel a certain positive satisfaction that we feel in achieving a goal until we have achieved it. While this can sometimes have a motivational aspect, I feel that it can also have a largely harmful effect. This stems from two possible outcome. First, it is possible that the feeling we predict or anticipate in achieving our goal is not always how we feel when we reach it. For example, I expected to feel elated, accomplished and satisfied upon graduating from a high-ranked university with honors. Instead, I felt a momentary satisfaction in walking in an overly long, mostly boring graduation ceremony and basking in the limelight of an afternoon's worth of praise from family and friends. The next day, however, I felt nothing. Nothing but a cold determination to attack the next challenge with everything I had, which would begin about three weeks later: the commencement of enrolling in another university's bachelor degree program.
There lies the second possibility: becoming so used to the feeling of 'having' to keep working and performing to reach our goal to feel the desired sense of achievement, that it becomes a 'normal' part of the life experience. The time when we allow ourselves to feel good and accomplished is always a certain distance away. It's always coming, but it's not here yet. There you have it. Not-yet-itis. An inflammation of our inner-self because a voice says not to feel satisfied-not just yet-which prevents a sense of peace and well-being and enoughness. You know that feeling, or at least you've heard of it. Being or doing enough to be loved, to be happy, to be satisfied, to be content. Not-yet-itis is a thief and takes away from our enoughness.
Well, enough is enough. Today I made a decision to stop worrying about the future-what degree program to pursue next, what business idea to put into action, what skill I want to perfect. Today I have administered my first dose of love and peace to heal the sense of not-yet-itis which has been a chronic condition for much of my existence on this journey called life. Today, I am enough. And so are you. Peace be with you.
Self-Assessment
1. Am I affected by not-yet-itis?
2. If so, what can I do to let it go and return to my natural state of being and feeling satisfied and content enough?
3. What actions can I take to create or nurture a space of peace inside myself so that it can manifest more fully in my life?