Much like the straw in the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale, unhappy memories can seem like such useless stuff, and can end up filling room after ever larger room in a sensitive and brooding mind. The result can be just as abusive as the nameless miller's daughter's plight.
But is there some way to spin such unwanted dross into ... gold? Most happily, yes, and a few such vehicles include painting, composing music, writing novels, keeping a journal, and crafting poetry. When we give our painful memories purpose, they acquire positive potential.
In other words, rather than allowing such tainting thoughts to endlessly haunt my mind, where they can whirl unbound, and fester into ever more painful hues, I use them. I begin with a feeling and associate it with a word, which becomes a phrase, and then a rhyme comes to mind.
Ultimately, I can make a great deal more sense out of what I've been thinking once I begin to lay it all out on paper. When it is out there, before me, where I can more clearly see it, it's "game on." Up roll the sleeves and off come the gloves.
Very often, what I expect to find waiting for me in those daunting and fully exposed images ends up revealing surprisingly deep insights about my past, my mind, and about situations in general. There is a wealth of liberty and vitality waiting for me where I had expected just more pain.
I, like the miller's daughter, have found myself in situations that were not of my own doing, but having been vulnerable to many hurts does not mean that I am so today. Those bygone hours and enemies no longer wield adverse potent power over me. Today, they are yielding gold.
But is there some way to spin such unwanted dross into ... gold? Most happily, yes, and a few such vehicles include painting, composing music, writing novels, keeping a journal, and crafting poetry. When we give our painful memories purpose, they acquire positive potential.
In other words, rather than allowing such tainting thoughts to endlessly haunt my mind, where they can whirl unbound, and fester into ever more painful hues, I use them. I begin with a feeling and associate it with a word, which becomes a phrase, and then a rhyme comes to mind.
Ultimately, I can make a great deal more sense out of what I've been thinking once I begin to lay it all out on paper. When it is out there, before me, where I can more clearly see it, it's "game on." Up roll the sleeves and off come the gloves.
Very often, what I expect to find waiting for me in those daunting and fully exposed images ends up revealing surprisingly deep insights about my past, my mind, and about situations in general. There is a wealth of liberty and vitality waiting for me where I had expected just more pain.
I, like the miller's daughter, have found myself in situations that were not of my own doing, but having been vulnerable to many hurts does not mean that I am so today. Those bygone hours and enemies no longer wield adverse potent power over me. Today, they are yielding gold.
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