Hangin' in

" The horizon leans forward, offering you space to place new steps of change."

- Maya Angelou


A thought occurred to me today. They tend to do that sometimes. I realized I've been saying "hang in there" to a lot of people lately, friends or acquaintances having difficulties with a wide variety of things, dragging them down. It's my form of counseling, my attempt to enforce my hope the person will find strength when he or she needs it, so they can cope with difficult times. It's a catch-all phrase most of us use from time to time, a sort of shoring up, letting the person know we care.

A lot of life is made up of hanging in there, basically waiting out tough times and hoping better things are right around the corner. Much like the time we spend waiting, whether in line or at the doctor's office, whatever, this "hanging in there" time is a sort of dead time, a time of suspension.

It also occurred to me, what a waste this time can be. It's stagnant and unmoving as we resort to some sort of primal hibernation instinct, a self-protecting reflex designed to prevent us from any more harm while we work out what's first and foremost on our minds.

What I do when I'm faced with a big life challenge like this is journal about it. I like to look at things from a variety of perspectives, taking the different sides of myself into account and commenting to my core, my "higher self" as it's so commonly called, talking things out until I feel I have a better idea what's going on. Often when you really dig into things solutions will occur to you, or sometimes just temporary patches that will make things feel a little better and allow you to move on.

We all have those dead times in our lives, whole weeks and months, sometimes years when we're static, making little or no forward progress whatsoever. The evil in that is it's time you can't get back, no matter how much you may wish it. We know the best thing to do is to get unstuck and move forward, but that's so much easier said than done. For the time that is gone, that we can't get back, the important thing is to figure out the lesson and move forward as positively as you can. But while you're stuck, it's equally important to work hard to dislodge yourself, moving out of the rut as best you can and as quickly as possible.

Maybe I should change my "hang in there" phrase to something more like, "write on!" or "talk it through." It occurs to me now that telling someone to essentially stay in place, hoping life will step in and move them forward may not be the best idea after all. Getting them unstuck is much more crucial, helping them through the rough patch until they can find a new grip on things.

Funny how sometimes the most common, everyday things we say suddenly become epiphanies when we really stop to think about them. That's another step toward the goal of the life that's lived, rather than the life spent waiting around for something to happen. And I'm not some guru, not some perfect person (ask my husband, he'll tell you...), but I have found becoming more conscious of every little thing can lead to a whole lot of bigger ones.

So, don't necessarily just hang in there when life gets tough. That's my advice. Write it out, talk it out, think it through, whatever's your style. And keep moving forward.