Notes to Myself: My Struggle to Become a Person

by Hugh Prather

I’m convinced that this anxiety running through my life is the tension between what I “should be” and what I am. My anxiety doesn’t come from thinking about the future but from wanting to control it. It seems to begin whenever I smuggle into my mind an expectation about how I or others should be. It is the tension between my desire to control the world and the recognition that I can’t.

Controlfreaks

I can have a self or I can have consistent behavior. I cannot have both.

The key to having “more than enough time” is to relax. Time is change, therefore I have more time per clock-hour when I am flexible. Rigid control means less time because less change. I can lengthen my life by staying out of doctrines and ruts.

“It will be interesting to see what happens” is a more realistic attitude toward future consequences than worry.

Excitement, dejection, and irritation also assume a knowledge of results that I cannot possess.

The rainbow is more beautiful than the pot at the end of it, because the rainbow is now. And the pot never turns out to be quite what I expected.

There is a part of me that wants to write, a part that wants to theorize, a part that wants to sculpt, a part that wants to teach…. To force myself into a single role, to decide to be just one thing in life, would kill off large parts of me.

When I make a mistake I experience something unexpected.

But a mistake is a declaration of the way I am now, a jolt to the expectations I have unconsciously set, a reminder I am not dealing with the facts. When I have listened to my mistakes I have grown.

The key to motivation is to look at how far I have come rather than how far I have to go.

Today never hands me the same thing twice and I believe that for almost everyone else life is also a mixture of unsolved problems, ambiguous victories, and vague defeats—with very few moments of clear peace.

There are no absolutes for something so relative as a human life. There are no rules for something so gentle as a heart.

Nothing exists for me until I see it.

And awareness shows me that, miraculously, the universe continues to function without my worry.

I believe that I know the specific amount needed that would allow me to have or do these few things I can’t quite afford, and if my income would increase by that much I would then be happy. Yet when the increase comes, I find that I am still discontent because from my new financial position I can now see a whole new set of things I don’t have. The problem will be solved when I accept that happiness is a present attitude, not a future condition.

It also could have been better, or, actually, it couldn’t have been any other way than the way it was.

The more I attempted to “be me” the more “me’s” I found there were.

Not wanting to express negative feelings is also a feeling, a part of me, and if it is the greater part, I will be truer to myself by not expressing them.

An emotion can be changed, but only to a different emotion.

I am always feeling s...

Will I keep waiting, or will I start with what I have?

Don’t fight a fact, deal with it. Don’t discard your self, be more of it.

It’s not that we fear the place of darkness but that we don’t think we are worth the effort to find the place of light.

Forgiveness is the willingness to begin. Guilt is the love of staying stuck.

Both my body and my emotions were given to me, and it’s as futile for me to condemn myself for feeling scared, insecure, or revengeful as it is for me to get mad at myself for the size of my feet.

Fear is based on the belief that I am safer not seeing, like a child closing its eyes as the ball comes toward it. Awareness is the first step to freeing the mind.

The way to be most helpful to others is for me to do the thing that right now would be most helpful to me.