My Own Worst Enemy

​Just heard a song that said, “I’m my own worst enemy.”  Ain’t that the truth.  I reckon I’d be right if I wasn’t wrong.  Still, it has been happening for over 60 years.  I am a candidate for a miracle.
I just about wince when I think of it now, but I used to have a book of columns.  I would mark with an x on a date I did something I did not want to do.  I’ve stopped that.  It made for depressing reading.
It is good to have good aspirations but getting there always involves falling short.  Being hard on myself does not help.  I never enjoy coming up short.  I do all I can to ensure that does not happen, but it happens still.  Maybe not as profusely as it could have, but once is enough.  And over many years I have accumulated a number of onces.
I learned pretty quickly that my having expectations of myself did not extend to others sharing the same expectations at the same time.   I had a “to do” list on the wall.  There was stuff I really wanted to have happen.  The reaction of others showed me pretty quickly that if I wanted to do that that was ok, but it was for me alone to pursue.
It is so wrong for me to expect others to live up to the expectations I have of myself.  Like me, people both pleasantly surprise and disappoint.  Too often my disappointment is based on my expectations rather than their own.  Everyone has their own road to walk and we are all at different stages.  There is no guarantee that what is right for me is right for another at that time.  Occasionally there is a merger and we can help each other but often the road we walk is ours to walk alone.
Sometimes my enemy is waiting in the wings.  It happens when the cause I live for does not extend beyond myself.  Mums dad was a bank manager and died within six months of retiring.  His enemy was waiting.  Yet dad was talking about learning the piano at 90.  His enemy had to wait ages (in fact I have joked with Merril that if he had of been alive when I had my stroke, he probably would have outlived me).  (I will never forget him telling about visiting the post office at around 90 and telling the post man he was expecting a letter from his mother.)
Yet those that know me know I am not big on to advocate pulling my socks up or snapping out of it.  I have no right to really.  Didn’t work for me.  The harder I tried the more dismally I failed and my chief enemy (me) let me know it big time.
No wonder it is said “know your enemy.”  Trying is always good but I need to make sure I am fighting the right battle.  I am most vulnerable when I am weakest but when I see I am weakest I am most likely to seek help.
Life to me is more than what I do.  It is who I am.