Mindful Thoughts #1

When I first began my mindfulness journey it was one of confusion and frustration. I was thinking, “you want me to sit here and just breathe and try not let my thoughts overwhelm me!?” That was my simplistic view of what Mindfulness was at the time. As a child I’ve had diagnosed ADD, which meant my mind raced and wandered all the time. The combination of childhood trauma also added a layer of difficulty when it comes to regulating my thoughts and emotions. I thought it was normal having these anxiety infused thoughts racing through my head every second. Since I could remember I had an anxiety about death. At any moment I thought I was going to die. It haunted me daily. I didn’t think this was abnormal, it was just the way it was. My mind was a labyrinth of different catastrophic thoughts and situations. Reflecting, it’s a miracle that I could function as highly as I could.

What mindfulness taught me was to observe my thoughts as thoughts. I could be curious with them, play around with them, observed how they began and ended, but most importantly I didn’t have to act on them nor did I have to believe these thoughts were reality. It allowed me to be an observer of my thoughts and feelings and not a participant. It gave me space. Space to evaluate, and act when it was necessary to act. I wasn’t driven so much by emotional impulse, but by observation and mindfulness.

The Burden

War enters a person and never leaves. It’s never over for the ones who have to see. War takes away something inside of us that we can never get back, our innocence. Some of us can cope better than others. Some of us are destroyed by it. We don’t fully comprehend what the experience has done to us. Can we truly heal? Can we replace that thing that has been taken away from us? Is it better to forget about healing and find a way to cope with our existence?

We can never get back what we have lost. We can always try to make a life by using what we’ve gained. How do we find meaning through suffering and destruction? We must live on for the ones who have gone and the ones who still remain by our side.

War is never over for those who experience the horrors of it. Welcome home parades or free dinners cannot erase the memories. Compliments cannot remedy the inner conflict we face as we arrive home to a world we don’t know anymore. Through my experiences, I realize I underestimated how quickly things change. Time continues to move with or without you. People don’t stop their lives and wait for you with bated breath.