Someone has just booted me out of their little world: an online friend who I never actually met in person. It seems this is becoming a pattern in my life: getting kicked out of people’s lives, organizations, establishments, so on and so forth. It’s a lot like being fired though when it happens with just another person, there’s no danger to personal finance. It has happened to me more than I’d like to admit: suddenly and more or less without explanation, being unceremoniously dropped from the universe of another. Honestly, looking back, it really does seem to happen to me a lot. Whenever it does, it leaves me reeling, staggering almost, attempting to understand what went wrong and what role (if any) I played in the separation. The 6 million dollar question: What did I do? What did I do to bring this about? Was it my fault? Could it have been prevented if I had just been smarter, more tactful, more respectful, more subservient, more aggressive, etc etc. Or was it going to happen no matter what I did or did not do? Was my connection to this person/place/organization bound to be severed by he/she/it/them eventually no matter how nice I was to them, how respectfully I behaved, how cleverly I stoked the fires of our connection?

When money is involved, it’s usually worse but it’s always at least a little bit painful and very stultifying whether money is involved or not. It’s actually more scary than anything: to be dropped like an object of some kind and almost feel yourself hit the floor so to speak.

Conflict immediately arises in my mind: should I attempt to understand what went wrong and go over the details to ensure this doesn’t happen again? Or should I dismiss it, write it off as just another one of those things that seems to happen to me (all the time)? On the one hand, I don’t to dwell on negative events that are in the past. They happened, there’s nothing I can do about it. But on the other, “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.” Is that what has been happening I wonder? Am I just not learning from my mistakes? Or is it just that every time these things happen to me, it’s just an unavoidable part of life, something I’m fated to continue experiencing until the day I die? And thus, if that’s true, then there’s utterly no point to paying any attention to them after they’re over because they will continue to happen whether I learn from them or not.

They are always disconcerting and stultifying as I mentioned earlier.

Part of me deeply believes that these things happen to me only because God has chosen for me a heavy burden involving the ostracism from and ridicule of many people outside of myself. This has always been my experience regardless of where or when I find myself. Hence, it would seem that it’s not really within my power to control or even affect.

Meditation has taught me that the events of one’s life are less important than how we “react” to those events and part of me also knows that this is at least partially true if not entirely true. But controlling one’s reactions is most certainly easier said than done. Science in fact teaches us that, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Hence, if someone or something “acts” upon me or my life, a reaction is a foregone conclusion. Which is correct? Meditation or science? Who knows.

Part of me also believes that every difficult experience I endure is an honorable one in some way. And everytime someone or something rejects me, drops me from their universe, they are in fact showing how unworthy of my time and attention they have always been. They are demonstrating how shallow and weak they are by refusing to give me the benefit of the doubt, another chance, or the time it takes to understand where I’m coming from.

But of course, the fact that it seems to happen to me a lot makes me wonder: is it really my fault? Is it something I need to change about myself that people keep shutting me down? The answer to that probably depends on who you ask I suppose. But if it doesn’t and the answer is yes across the board, that is more depressing than I care to contemplate.

I always come away from these sorts of things wanting answers and getting none. Like I said before: what did I do that was so wrong? It’s hard to make changes when you don’t know what you need to change…