Melissa Roth -- Freespeak Blog

I had an interesting awareness this week.  I get into these spirals sometimes where I am so down on myself.  Like I just keep coming around the bend and there I am at the same old issue-I'm not good enough, I'm not enough, I'm a failure-basically any of these cliché themes.  I just go around and around the circle to keep running into the same walls, facing the same challenges, fighting the same character defects.   It feels so futile to keep trying at times like that.  This week I was in that place again.  And then I read something about a circular staircase and it completely changed my viewpoint.  There are so many times that it feels like I am moving in circles.  There are themes or lessons that keep coming around in life and although I see that it feels like it is the same and I am going in circles – it is really a circular staircase.  Yes, I come around the curve to meet the same issue but I am at a higher level.  I am ...

I love narrative.  I make a story out of everything.  I look at the big picture – the whole story – the beginning, the middle, the circumstances, experiences, actions, the where we are now, what works, what informs, the where is this going and what might come next.  And I do it with everything—politics, events, people, news, television shows, movies, books, my life, and the lives of everyone I know.  It is actually how I see the world.  For so long I felt like there was something wrong with me because I appeared to have a more detached attitude than others because I don't dwell on the details of a situation.  I have trouble staying with the details of and the feelings of the moment without straying to the big picture and the rise and fall of a whole life.  It sometimes comes across as a lack of compassion.  I realize now that I don't lack compassion, I just see more there than the pain or challenge of the moment.  Life is long and ea...