I am right now in an unenviable position of being a mentor and guide to a young lady who is going through a very rough time with her marriage in particular and life in general. It is all the more unenviable when you consider that I did not go looking for this experience but, was more or less shanghaied into it by circumstances.
The only reason that I can think of for having been chosen for this situation is my age and so called wisdom.
Be that as it may, I am stuck with it and I do my best to be of help. Time and again, I have expressed my helplessness in advising specific courses of action because I have never met the husband. The lady simply says that she just wants to use me as a sounding board to think aloud. What she does not realise is that it is sapping my energy levels by rants that meander all over the place but covering the same ground over and over again and again.
Last night before we ended our session, other than one face to face, all over the telephone, she wistfully said “How I wish that we could go back to how things were!” She did not wait for my response and disconnected.
My initial response was to convey to her my best wishes that they do by a text message but before I did that, it occurred to me that it would be wrong for me to send that message as I strongly believe that how things were before was what has brought the situation to what it is now! And I said to myself, phew, what an insight!
We often wish that going back to how things were would somehow make us happier. Will it? With my insight, I went over some of the situations that I wish were like the old days and came to the conclusion that had they not taken place, I wouldn’t be where I am now! And that is by and large, a very happy place but, those moments of nostalgia when one wishes that one could go back to where one was before are always when one is not in a happy frame of mind. And, one has come to that stage because of what happened in the past!
Just think about it, analyse your own experiences and see if it really would make things better than what they are right now? How can they, when exactly what happened then is what has made you come to this stage of unhappiness!
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