Being Let Off From How Bad it was Before
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Life is full of repetition. We do the same things day in and day out, week in and week out. Repetition gives us a feeling of comfort, and the repetitive nature of life makes us feel secure.
If things kept changing and were always different, it would be stressful and tiring. But, of course, a little change is nice. However, this everyday repetition isn't the kind that I want to talk about. The repetition in my life is usually the bad kind—the repetition of undesirable situations. But sometimes, it can be positive.
There are two kinds of repetition in my life. The first is situations that have the same elements as other situations I have been in, like chances that I've had to change my job or positions that I was excited about and that almost happened but then didn't.
The second is when the exact same thing repeats itself, like getting the same kind of headache on the same day three weeks in a row. These are the kinds of repetition I can't ignore, even though I can never fully understand why these situations repeat. Sometimes, if I think rationally about it, then I can see that for certain situations, it was a good thing for me to do the same thing again. In some cases, I could do it better or I could appreciate more what was happening, but more often than not, it seems pointless and, not to mention, painful to do it all again.
And it often seems like I'm finished with repeating a certain type of situation, but then months or years later, it will come back to repeat again. I'll explain this in more detail. I just recently had what I would call an emotionally charged conversation with my wife. In this type of conversation, both of us are saying what we feel and are trying to make the other person understand how difficult our lives have been.
But this conversation has happened multiple times over the years, and it must have been many years since it happened last. And this time, as in the other times, we were both saying the same things that we always say and pointing out the same problems that we have always had.
And when it happens, this is when I feel like my life hasn't progressed or moved forward at all, and I'm back where I started. And it's no one's fault. I'm not blaming my wife or my relationship with her. It's my life that isn't living up to my expectations.
I base these expectations on the trends my life has been following and how good my life has been lately. So if I get hit with something from the past, it seems like a backward step to me. And although my initial reaction when I repeat these situations is that I'm back at the beginning where I started, what I really have to do is to look a little closer.
When a situation repeats, I expect it to go as horribly wrong as the last time, but each time it happens, I feel like I am being let off from how bad it was before. This can either be by the result being more positive, the situation being over more quickly, or me feeling less damaged from the experience.
Also, when I look back over my life, it's clear that although these situations repeat, I have seen a steady improvement in each area of my life. And it might be that the repetition punctuates the progress that I've made and gives me a chance to reflect on where I was and where I am now.
