These last few days have been ‘odd’ for me.
I realised that I was grieving, but couldn’t think of why I was doing that. There had been no deaths in my circle of friends and family and yet, there was a sense of loss in me.

It took a while for me to realise what it was all about.
Before I could do that, I had to just let it be. Our conditioned reaction is to get into ‘doing’ something, actually anything, to avoid feeling bad. Sometimes, the opposite is true and we just need to let things be.

Allowing to let it be and getting on with my day meant that I wasn’t fighting the feeling any more. Of course, it wasn’t pleasant, but I could just observe it. After a while I started to get a sense of what it was about.

I was grieving for a future loss. The thing I was grieving for hadn’t even happened yet – and perhaps never will. Yet there was still a sense of loss being created because of the thoughts in my head that I was coming to the end of a (working) relationship.

This got me to wondering how many other times I have suffered over something that has not happened, but I think it may happen – and so create the feelings. In effect I was suffering because of a picture of loss that I had in my mind. Crazily, it was a picture I had myself created, and could also change!

We are all creators of our feelings, and we can create the good feelings just as easily as the ‘bad’ feelings by the picture we hold in mind. We have forgotten this basic truth and so end up creating suffering when we could be creating pleasing feelings.

Where in your life do you do this? Where are you suffering BEFORE something has happened, even when there is a chance that it may NEVER happen! And even if the worst were to happen, the depth of your suffering is entirely within your control. Perhaps, instead of being taught to catastrophise everything, we should be looking at the positive in everything, if only to reduce and, perhaps, even eliminate suffering. Then again, in today’s society, someone may accuse you of holding onto false hope! On the whole, people are happy with seeing you suffer rather than be happy – it makes for better news.

Go on then, if you’re going to catastrophise, at least enjoy it.