Don’t be a fly on a window pane

To get out of a situation that you dislike or despise, first examine how and why you got into it in the first place. What got you in can often get you out.  

Very often we find ourselves in places and contexts that we hate. It could be in a relationship or with regard to your career or your health or your money situation. You may just not be happy being where you are – or being with someone! The normal response is to get frustrated and bitter with yourself, with people around you and with the situation. This isn’t going to help. You have to get out of the situation by going out the same way that you got in. A simple analogy is to consider the plight of a smoker – he or she often detests the idea of chain-smoking. In private, she or he will confess that they feel lousy every time they light up. Yet they keep suffering because the only way they can stop feeling that way is by quitting smoking. They got into smoking from not smoking. They have to get out of smoking by not smoking. Simple. Period. If you recall seeing a fly on a glass pane you will understand this better. The poor fly does not know how to go past the closed window’s glass pane, into the garden, and so, pathetically, it keeps knocking itself on the glass pane until it loses its energy and falls dead on the window sill. Poor fly. All it had to do was to turn around and go out the same way it came in – through an open door or window. Now, a fly can be forgiven for being stupid. Not you and me! We have been endowed with an intelligence that demands that we don’t battle situations mindlessly.

This approach applies to all our daily emotions too – anger, hatred, fear, jealousy, anxiety, worry. Every day living is full of situations that force us to experience some or many of these emotions daily. At times, especially when we are making an effort to transform ourselves, the very thought that we allowed these emotions to take root and rule us, makes us feel disgusted. There’s no point getting angry over having gotten angry. Go to the cause of your anger. Go to the cause of why you fear someone or something. Go to the cause of your worry. When you can go to the root and uproot that cause you can be free of whatever you despise and whatever holds you hostage.