Been There. Done That. Doing it Again! By Susan Burrell

Do you ever feel like you are on a constant “wash and repeat” cycle?  Been there, done that, doing it again?  Where things appear surprisingly the same - like you have been driving around the block, over and over? 

Sometimes visiting what was can be helpful in the idea of “learning from our mistakes” thang.  But how many times do you want to do the same thing over again?  (Having never watched “Groundhog Day,” I can’t make a reference to that.  Yeah, yeah, I know…)  

Then there are times that we revisit old playgrounds from our childhood or connect with old high school friends who may or may not have been our besties. We revisit things from our past to see if they really happened or because the nostalgia frees something hidden in our hearts.  

Sometimes, we review our history to see if it could have been changed or could be better than we remember.  We enhance the color in our mind, possibly hear the old songs playing in the background, smell the roses or the exhaust fumes.  However, when we go into our history/her-story, we are simply not living our new life, our future life.  

Personally, as I go out into the post-lock down environment, I feel a low-grade fear pulsing at the back of my brain. I can’t quite tell if I am picking up where I left off (ie, racing down the freeway, willing the slow pokes to move out of my way so I can make it on time to who knows where.)  Is that unknown fear pushing me to revert to old patterning?  Or have I not had enough time to revise my inner landscape so that I can enter the world filled with love and light, balanced, kind, happy?  

I do know this - I only want to DO the things that grow the love that I am. And remove any burrs of fear or anger that I may accumulate as I go out and interface with people unknown to me.  ( Hold up! we can’t interface with anyone because everyone is wearing a mask now. What face?  You can’t even see their eyes if they are wearing sunglasses. But I digress.) 

I know I don’t want to do again - to do what didn’t bring me into a state of satisfaction, humility, equanimity.  A state of loving kindness.  

What I do want to do again, and again, is to love myself fully with tremendous respect for my her-story that has brought me to where I am now.  I want to do again, what continues to grow my wisdom, my consciousness, my heart. I want to build up my healthy boundaries while demolishing my state of not-so-healthy or unrealistic  boundaries. I want to be mindful enough of my boundaries to do it again and again. Let’s face it, just like anything out in the natural world, boundaries can erode. 

I want to realize that I have “Been there, Done that,” but in a good way. In a healthy and heart lightening way. 

And the doing it again?? Is continuing to plant seeds of light as I go out into this new world.  Just like Paul Bunyan - Now whose history did that come from?? ;) ;)