My pain is my purpose.

Photo by: Tim Bindner Photography

My pain is my purpose.  I heard that today at a seminar at work from a life coach named Vitale Brown.  She was referencing a 10-year addiction to Adderall, but I felt that statement applied to my life as well.

My parents were both counselors in the school system and used to dealing with kids and their issues.  As a child, I was taught to analyze every thought, emotion, and feeling.  I was also taught that I had to express and explain how I feel.  As counselors, they would show me how to analyze these issues and would guide them.  Many times I was told why certain thoughts, emotions are feeling were wrong.  I was often compared to other kids (still happens today) and was shown how they had handled things better.  As part of my makeup, I was encouraged to focus on both my strength of consistency and harmony.  It was not until my late thirties before I understood those strengths and why they were so ingrained in me.  Consistency is what it appears to be.  I am ingrained to want and need a level playing field for everyone.  Everyone should get the same amount of food, the same amount of money, the same treatment, etc.  In the real world, this is not the case.  It is and probably will always be a struggle for me.

Harmony is a similar trait, wherein I strive to make everyone happy and content.  I once had a friend tell me that it is not a strength but a weakness.  He may be right.  With harmony, I want to ensure everyone is happy if not content, especially when it comes to how they feel and interact with me.  I also struggle with this.  As a person with a great flair for sarcasm, I tend to upset or make people mad who do not get my sarcasm, and for many years I always was apologizing, many times for no real reason.

As I approach the age of fifty, I am in a constant search for purpose in my life.  I took all that analyzing as a child and turned it into self-analyzing.  I was loved as a child, nurtured as a child, but I was always taught to focus on my negatives and try to improve them.  I have developed over the years to focus not only on the negatives but to prepare for the worst.  I know extremely positive people and deal with them quite often, but for me, I do not believe in many of the things I have heard throughout my life.  “You are great.  You are smart.  You CAN do anything you put your mind too.“  While I feel, for the masses, this is a great philosophy to have, for me, being a realist, I know the truth.  Bad things will happen, you have no control over these things.  Most of us will work for the rest of our lives, and likely in roles, we don’t like.  Most of us will never be millionaires, famous actors, athletes, scholars, Man/Woman of the year, or whatever role we feel is glamorous.  However, I do feel that people should focus on doing the best they can and focus on what is important to them.

I have been called by many people a negative person.  Again I like to think of it as a real person.  I try to prepare for the rough patches that I know will come in my life.  Do I focus on the negatives 100%, no?  I do however try to plan and prepare more than I think most do.  To me, part of being a self-proclaimed realist causes me great anxiety and stress when I receive compliments.  I know the intent is there, and it is the proper thing to do, but when I hear you are smart, and I flunk an exam or hear you are a great photographer when I could provide them 1000’s of shots that make me look like a brand new photographer, the real me wants to snap back and say I told you so, but I don’t.  People are raised to be kind to each other, and I think part of that is to “blow smoke” by giving out fake compliments.

Bad things happen and always will.  I have lost a few family members to cancer in my life.  The three most important men in my life have died due to negatives (two to cancer, one to drugs).  I have watched countless people die in front of me when I worked in the hospital emergency room.  I have seen people decay and eventually die in nursing homes that I have worked in.  Bad things happen.  I have learned to deal with those feelings over the years.  I like many others have and still do deal with bought of depression, much of which I feel may be self-inflicted.

With age comes experience.  I am slowly letting go of these feelings that so often haunt me.  I am finding passion in my photography and hiking.  I am trying to be the best father and husband I can, though I feel I do fail miserably sometimes.  I am re-evaluating not only what is important to me, but who is.  I was once the person who had many ‘friends’, but now realize the harsh truth that I need to rely on only a few close friends to get me by.  I am trying to let negativity, drama, stupidity and what I perceive as energy suckers roll off my back.  It is a difficult task, especially with social media and the state of the world these days.  Anyone who knows me knows if nothing else I don’t follow the path that I ‘should’.  I have always done my own thing and like what I like.  I don’t drink alcohol (personal reasons), don’t do drugs, don’t like to read, don’t like college basketball, and don’t smoke to name a few.  Many of these were peer pressures as a kid that I had difficulty dealing with, but I made it through. These pressures have fueled my episodes of depression that still have deep-seated roots today.

As mentioned in previous blogs, hiking as well as photography has provided me an outlet to release my anxiety and stress.  Music also provides an outlet but I will save that one for another blog.

I am striving to change my thinking.  Affirmations on how I speak to myself must change.  I hope, wish and pray for something good to happen.  Programming from my past and environment impact who I am.  Speak it and it becomes true, think it and it becomes true.  At least the seed is planted.  I am always preparing for success and failure.  I will learn to take people’s negative opinions as well as their compliments with a grain of salt, whatever their intent.

My pain is my purpose.  It helped me get where I am and drives me to continue to push forward.  Whether physical, mental or spiritual pain, I will prepare for it and use that as fuel to increase my positive outlook on life.

Until next time,

Tim