The Viable Alternative

In life, we all know of many people who have a load of issues in their lives with legitimate excuses as to why they’re messed up.

“My mother threw me down the stairs.”

“My father abandoned us.”

“My parents never made me feel loved.”

“My mother was a drug addict.”

The stories go on and on as to why people have some type of dysfunction in their lives. I’ll even add a story of my own…

As a child, I was emotionally abused by my father. From as young as I could remember, he would call me “useless,” “stupid,” and an “idiot” for the slightest mistake I made or for not doing something in a way that was perceived as “perfect.” To make things even more weird, I have a younger brother who I in turn treated the way my father treated me, and my father upon seeing this would fume, calling me a “wicked child” and asking me how dare I treat someone like that who was only a baby. On top of this, he regularly emasculated me throughout my childhood to make himself feel powerful.

In the present day, as I work on overcoming my issues with money, and my personal blocks regarding why I’ve not yet been able to be successful, I can directly point to the emotional wounds that were left from childhood as the root cause to these issues.

So, regarding my situation, what choices do I have?

Well, my first choice is to sit and complain about it to anyone who’s willing to listen, continuing to relive my childhood experiences over and over again to feel that sense of justification I get when I say that I was wronged and I am a victim. I can in addition use my wounds as an excuse as to why I’m incapable of getting the things I want in life and simply accept them as blocks to where I want to go. When they come up, I can simply turn around and go back in the other direction rather than face them down and find a way over them.

However, the consequences of doing that is a mediocre life where I continue to walk around wounded while watching others make things happen and participate fully in life. In this option my wounds run my life rather than my dreams and my internal resources and treasures.

My other option is to simply get over it.

The words “get over it” seem to have a negative connotation when you suggest them to someone who’s been through a harrowing experience that has left them wounded, scarred and traumatized. They depict callousness and a lack of empathy for the person who has gone through what they did.”

Personally, I think these words are greatly misunderstood and with the right perspective, can be some of the best advice ever given.

Allow me to illustrate…

When we were kids, I’m sure we can all remember getting into a verbal or physical fight with one of our friends where we were at each others throats, intentionally trying to inflict pain on one another. However, a few weeks later, if not hours or days, someone may see us happily playing together as if nothing ever happened. If someone were to come and ask us, “Hey, what happened to you guys? I thought the two of you were fighting,” our response would basically point to the fact that we got over whatever we were fighting about.

In the same token, if someone who saw you pissed off one day over something that happened to you, and then a few days later saw you smiling and happy were to say, “Hey, why are you smiling? I thought you were pissed off over something that happened to you the other day.” You would look at the guy as if he were some weirdo and say, “Oh, I’m over it.”

In both these cases, the people described were able to move past whatever had upset them in such a way that it didn’t have a negative effect on their present emotional state. (Now, this may a bit of an over-simplification here, but humour me for a bit as I make a point. 🙂 )

I will admit that these instances are definitely a lot “lighter” than the horrors many people have experienced in life, but the lesson to be learned to from my two examples is that if you want to move past ANYTHING that you consider traumatic, hurtful, negative, etc, so that it ceases to get in the way of your happiness, success and fulfillment, you have to find a way to get over it.

In my case, I’ve chosen to undergo the process of getting over my past by undergoing a type of therapy called body oriented therapy which combines talking with different types of bodywork to help me release stuck emotions such as anger and sadness that are attached to painful memories. By doing this, I allow myself the chance to finally heal so that my emotional wounds are no longer running my life and getting in the way of my success.

Definitely “getting over it” isn’t easy especially due to some of the very painful things we’ve experienced in the past, and also because it involves facing some painful memories and aspects of ourselves that we’d rather not deal with.

On the other hand, the benefits you’re able to reap from “getting over it” are endless. Some of them include, happiness, fulfillment, healing and getting your TRUE, whole self back. That’s a hell of a lot better than the misery, unhappiness, anger, stress, etc, that comes with holding onto baggage not to mention the issues that come on top of holding onto baggage which include drug abuse, substance abuse and the litany of other things we do to numb the pain.

Thus, looking at the cost of holding onto all this baggage, and the benefits of letting them go, it’d behoove a person to do whatever it takes to get over his issues, whether it be therapy, counseling, yoga, or whatever activity that allows some type of catharsis. In fact, I would venture to say, your life depends on it, literally and figuratively.

Before I go, I’ve wrestled with adding the next few lines below and finally decided, “What the heck?”

Since The Viable Alternative is about individuals, groups and nations stepping out of a dominating paradigm called The Illusion by using their own unique resources and treasures to create their own destiny, I thought to briefly address African Americans.

We’re all aware that African Americans have had a very tragic history from being kidnapped from their villages or captured as prisoners of war and marched miles to the coast to be chained on the bottom of filthy slave ships to be brought to a strange land where they had to work for the rest of their lives as someone else’s property, all the while being raped, tortured, beaten, killed, bought and sold, emasculated, dehumanized etc, etc. No doubt that though this happened hundreds of years ago to as recent as 150 years ago, African Americans today are still carrying in some way the wounds of their ancestors. If there’s any question about that, just look at the low self esteem and inferiority complex that can still be found in some people that is a direct result of the slave mentality instilled into their ancestors. Also the fact that many harp on what their ancestors had been through show that there is still pain despite the fact they never personally experienced it.

Now, when confronted with how their statistics compare dismally to other ethnic groups in America in terms of crime, dropping out of school, single parent households, teen pregnancy, business ownership, poverty, etc, etc. many Africans would explain away such statistics with reasons such as racism and the legacy of slavery.

With such dismal statistics to contend with, and their explanations as to why they’re the way they are, a Black person who tells an African American to get over the past would be called an “sellout” and a White person who did the same would get called a racist. However, I ask, that if the legacy of slavery is one of the reasons you give for the dismal statistics you have, wouldn’t “getting over it” within the context I explained earlier be the best advice one can give to bring any group forward?

African Americans are still obviously wounded from their past, and as such, need to come together and find SOME way they can heal so they can finally get over it and move towards a prosperous future.

This is The Viable Alternative.

Hope this helps,

Ike