Life In Motion

I hear that word often and for a while, I was ok with it but lately, I find that it irritates me.  It is a word used to describe something that cannot be defined so they make it a "process."

There are no actual processes in life but two.  Birth.  Death.  Can't get away from either and nothing you can do to change them.  Everything in between is what happens after you take your first breath and when you take your last.  Emotions, feelings, thoughts and just living cannot be a process.

Let's take the obvious one that everyone knows.  They say there are five steps to the grieving process but how many people actually follow the "format" laid out?  Someone dies.  You deny it and isolate yourself.  You get angry.  You make bargains with God or others.  You get depressed.  You accept it.  Ok, there are your five steps.  When my father died, I didn't have have four out of the five.  Oh, oh.  I didn't conform to the process.

Compartmentalizing things makes it easier to handle and perhaps allows our mind to feel at ease.  You feel normal like everyone else.

Really?  I know more peope like this...

You feel lost.  You feel numb.  You stop living.  You ignore it.  You feel sorrow. You get stuck.  You are confused.  You hate.  You exist.

Where are the process in each of these? There is none.  Life is not a process and we have to stop giving in to what others teach to be normal and learn to find our own way to deal with our own emotions.  Who knows us best than ourselves anyway?

It's like saying your child picks a pretty flower and gives it to you.  Was that a process?  No, dammit, that is a miracle!  It is called love.  But if you have to live with processes, then you could not see that or feel the love.  Think of how much you miss out on when you do that.

A lot of life coaches I know get stuck in the wording and teaching when referring to life and see everything as a process.  Some times, they have to let it all go and just freaking live.  Let it flow.  Let what comes, comes and stop saying, "that's part of the process."  Bahhhh!  Wrong answer.  I'm sorry, but you should have moved on to the next process.  That should have happened when you were 25 not 40.  That is the problem with processes... it keeps you from actually living because that is all you see.

I see mine as an adventure.  Different things every day to make it interesting and unique to me.  I don't do processes.  If I am angry, I have constructive ways to release them but not in a process outlined in a book or a teaching.  It is within me.  If I am happy, I show it.  If I am sad, I withdraw and allow it to consume me in private.

Maybe if one saw the meaning, it might make more sense.

–noun

1. a systematic series of actions directed to some end: to devise a process for homogenizing milk

2. a continuous action, operation, or series of changes taking place in a definite manner: the process of decay

3. a. Law - the summons, mandate, or writ by which a defendant or thing is brought before court for litigation

3. b. Law - the whole course of the proceedings in an action at law

4. Photography. photomechanical or photoengraving methods collectively

5. Biology, Anatomy. a natural outgrowth, projection, or appendage: a process of a bone

6. the action of going forward or on

7. the condition of being carried on

8. course or lapse, as of time

–verb (used with object)

9. to treat or prepare by some particular process, as in manufacturing

10. to handle (papers, records, etc.) by systematically organizing them, recording or making notations on them, following up with appropriate action, or the like: to process mail

11. to require (someone) to answer questionnaires, perform various tasks, and sometimes to undergo physical and aptitude classification examinations before the beginning or termination of a period of service: The army processes all personnel entering or leaving the service

12. to convert (an agricultural commodity) into marketable form by a special process, as pasteurization

13. to institute a legal process against

14. to serve a process or summons on

15. Computers. to carry out operations on (data or programs)

–verb (used without object)

16. to undergo the activities involved in processing personnel: The recruits expected to process in four days

–adjective

17. prepared or modified by an artificial process: process cheese

18. noting, pertaining to, or involving photomechanical or photoengraving methods: a process print

19. Informal. of or pertaining to hair that has been conked

20. Movies. created by or used in process cinematography: a moving background on a process screen

So, did any of there fit your life?  For my work, banking, food, I found a few that would work but not my life.  It has twists and turns that cannot be defined by processes.  And I didn't see the meaning where it said, creating a way to live your life in a set way.  If we did that, we would all be alike.  Didn't Hitler try that and fail miserably?

Life.  See it with its shiny colors.  Its watery colors.  Its dark colors.  Its bright colors.  Its shadows.  Its light.  Its abyss.  But you cannot put it into a process because eventually, something happens that does not flow with what is outlined and guess what?  You get stuck.

Just live and let iive.  Expect everything.  Expect nothing.  Love unconditional but be detached.  Be kind.  Be compassionate.  Let go of processes and live your life in motion.

To the Universal You!