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Taking Care to take care

Take care.  Just how much is contained in those two words.  I'm not sure I do too well at keeping up with this parting statement.  

I take care of others more easily that I take care of taking care of myself.  Yes, I can do this for myself as well, but I think that it takes way more effort to identify my own needs than it takes for me to see the needs of others.  

The other has already figured out for me, so all I have to do is answer to their need.  It's so simple.  More complex is to look at myself and judge whether or not I want to help.  I often feel compelled to help.  It's much later that I realize that I often end up "helping" others to avoid what's going on with me. 

It's terribly uncomfortable for me to see someone "in need".  It's very easy to jump in and try to share some wisdom or know-how or share some resource that I think up so creatively to assuage the other's discomfort.  

It really is very unhinging for me to watch another have a bad day and not try to cheer them up.  After all on my bad days, who cheers me up?  I do.  I want others to be happy.  I think that I can make other's happy.  Well I can't.  Happiness is one's own business.  

I think that biological predispositions might play a role.  My personality type is a component.  Likely, I've often been rewarded more frequently by doing something well for another, than I reward myself for doing myself the same favor.  When I do anything for me, rarely do I pay that close of attention to the inward response.  

Maybe it's not too safe to do so because I'm acknowledging the profound longings of the subconscious mind for oh so many "other" unmet needs.  How often do am I able to get my own needs met?  Sometimes, but not enough.  It's more blessed to give than to receive?  Says who: the takers/receivers?

There are mutual benefits of giving and taking; ebbing and flowing are life cycles.  Sunrise and sunset.  High and low tides.  So much duality, but then all these separate extremes seem to bound the limits of various extremities of reality.  There may not be as much duality as there is unity, and that unity contains the extremes.

I can get my needs met.  It's a simple statement.  How much do I believe it; do I act on it?  What' the consistency of self-care, and this taking care to take care?  In the question lies the answer.  This thinking, and pondering, this thing that I do here on this blog, is something, and somehow integral to my wholeness of existence.  

Maybe there are more vistas to explore; more digging down to find my own bedrock.  The super-structure that rises upon the foundations of existence, I hope at a minimum are reflective of my actual reality, one that I get to create day in and day out.  Nothing is more exciting or frustrating than building me.  I suppose a whole lot of letting go, and resting in who I am already holds true in so many situations. I do contain extremes of both peace and conflict. Anxiety, like the tide, ebbs and flows.  This unity of experience contains all the fragments of reality.  

Sometimes the container has to break so that it can be expanded.


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