Workshops to change my life ...

About eleven years ago I attended a 3-day seminar called Landmark Forum. For 14 hours a day, a 'coach' would talk to us about the reality of the facts of each of our lives and help us find easier solutions in order to live better lives.

On the first day, after David; a powerful male Australian speaker spent the morning explaining about the course, he asked all 280 of us to put up our hands if we wanted to answer the question: "Why are you here?"

I was one of the first to put up my hand and he called me over to speak on the low stage close to him.

Although I'd been sitting in one of the front rows I had not noticed the position of the volume control. So, once behind the microphone, I looked around and gasped:   
"Wow!" At which point there were sounds of gentle laughter.

Then he looked at me from behind his desk and asked: "Introduce yourself and tell us why you are here."

"My name is Haldita, I'm almost 40. I have done a few years of therapy; self-development workshops, meditation and spiritual talks but I still have issues with the way certain people can affect me with their words and actions. From what I understand, after all the work of getting closer to finding myself again and understanding many facts of life and different behaviour patterns in different people, I now feel closer to finding happiness. This course, I believe will show me 2+2 equals 4 and it is what it is, so learn to get on with it.

"That is quite accurate," said David. "So what happened?"

"It was a tough marriage for me and after all the verbal and certain aspects of physical abuse, I was so miserable in myself that I had to find a way out of my anger. I did not want to end up a bitter, angry old woman. Surely, there was a way to find peace and happiness again."

He continued: "So when you say you were so miserable in your marriage... why didn't you leave? Were you tied down? Was your husband stopping you from leaving?"

It was so easy to go back to the usual old way of thinking... What, you want to tell me is that it was my fault that he beat me up just because I did not leave?

I continued: "My parents' first divorce came when I was very young and it affected me to such an extent that I swore never to put my own children through a similar ordeal. I can't leave my children! At that time we were living abroad, in a country where women were not given many rights when divorcing." I tried hard not to sob but it was too late. Tears ran down my face.

The coach went on: "You were comfortable staying in that situation rather than taking action in making changes in your unhappy life. So, you stayed feeling sorry for yourself and victimising yourself; which was easier to do than to move on and leave."

This comment shocked me to the core. I was trying to make sense of a reality that was so new to me.  It made me realise he was right. I had been feeling sorry for myself and victimising myself. It did not justify my husband's behaviour towards me, but I could have taken the consequences and left if I really wanted to. At the same time, I knew that had been my way of dealing with a situation that is unique in each of our lives.  I do not regret one second of my life. Sometimes we have to experience very different intensities of pain and suffocate to the point of no return, to hit rock bottom in order to want to break free - to find peace. And possibly, even to learn to love like you have never been hurt before. Very profound words and very difficult to completely leave behind certain experiences when we get faced with them over and over again. What the coach said made sense. Victimisation was to become a thing of my past.

'Nor myself, nor would I allow anyone ever to feel sorry for me,' was the pact I made with myself there and then.

The coach went on to tell us to forget about expectations. From the time we become aware as children, we start to expect things... 

My mother should be kind and understanding at all times! Without a fault.

Siblings are all about having each other's back, loving and compromising. It's what the book says.

School would be fun and everyone will be kind and friendly. Seriously?!

Your partner will be loving and by your side no matter what. That's why you get married. But then, is it? 

And basically, life would be rosy posy. Yeah right.

Thinking back, the school was not an easy ride for me. I was at most an observer, quietly getting on with what was expected of me. I do not recall mingling with too many girls. Looking back, most of my time was spent with one close friend with whom I lost touch, after I left the country in my early teens, to study abroad. Attending boarding school in England in the early seventies, away from the warmth of a privileged upbringing was tough, to say the least. Basically, in time, I learnt to understand life is a school. And the only way to live it well is to learn the tools. 

Two main rules; 'acceptance' rule number one. And that generally 'expectation' leads to disappointment.