I've written a lot about my thoughts on how to escape victim mentality and shared my philosophy as it developed along the way. I had a dream last night and I wasn't really sure how to interpret something that happened in it, but as usual the answers are somewhere bouncing around inside my head if I take the time to listen and sort them out. So today I thought I'd share my dream and what I gained from it. It's another one of those abstract wiggly philosophy concepts, but I'll try to put it into words as usual.
In the dream, someone that I view as a "teacher" or "mentor" and I were both running from and swatting at a large wasp trying to sting us. It's funny because it's the first time I really considered this person as just a "normal" person like all of us and I felt that was a good reminder and lesson to take away from this dream. It turns out there was more to it though and finally I hit the wasp with a newspaper inches from stinging him. The wasp burst open and a clear goo fell out onto the floor and this "teacher" was kind of staring at it and mulling it over.
I asked him if it was toxic as some of it had splashed on him and he said, "It could be, we should probably check." He started scooping the liquid goo into a paper envelope and I remember thinking that it seemed odd he would choose a paper envelope to store liquid in, but I didn't say anything. A few minutes later we were wherever it is that we were going to have the goo checked out and he pulled out the envelope and it was empty, but there was a wet spot spreading across his shirt where he had stored it. I told him, "It appears we couldn't hold it." He simply looked at me and said, "I knew that, but I tried anyway."
It was at this point that I woke up and was thinking over the dream. A few hours, conversations, and interactions later it became clear what the message was that I was missing. There is no need to waste time analyzing things that don't affect me as toxic or not. Ultimately it's just an unnecessary worry and waste of my own energy, but there was something else there too. Accepting that I can't hold other's negativity also means that I can't hold other's positivity either. It all starts internally and we are the source of creating how we feel about things. Trying to hold another person's feelings internally doesn't seem to last. Namaste.