We can't always walk away and we can't always be happy .....

It is interesting reading some of the spiritual posts which go up and I like many of them but equally, sometimes they just sound trite and unrealistic.

One suggests that we should respect ourselves enough to walk away from that which does not serve us, does not help us grow and does not make us happy. The reality is that if we did we would spend our whole lives walking away.

Surely if one could walk away from anything then we would but often we cannot and it has nothing to do with a lack of respect - it is just the way it is! We can have difficult situations with our children for example and we may find it impossible to believe it serves us, let alone grows us, feeling crushed as one can and it certainly does not make us happy but we would never walk away.... and should never walk away.

Equally with parents who are deserving of our honouring no matter how hard it might be to remain in a relationship; or our siblings whom we have chosen to be with in this life; or our close friends whom we have known for many years and who, because of what is going on in their lives, no longer 'serve' us, although my question is, who says they should ?

And what does it mean to say that someone or something 'grows us' that we can define  as growth anyway? How would we know what is growing us and what is not given that often it is only when we look back over many years that we can see that difficult situations were in fact just what we needed and the best thing for us? The difficult people and situations are our greatest teachers so says another spiritual maxim.

And then there is the illusion of what makes us happy, when often, what makes us happy or makes us feel happy or think we are happy is the worst thing for us. Ask anyone who is addicted to drugs, drink, sex, work, exercise, food.....

If we are in an abusive relationship there is good reason to walk away but generally such relationships are long lasting and the decision to walk away comes very late in the piece. One could argue that if a woman does not walk away the first time her partner is physically violent toward her then she is accepting the situation and the problem is as much hers as his. Obviously it is not always easy to walk away and that is also the point. There are many things which don't 'serve' us, which are painful, which make us desperately unhappy and we feel we cannot walk away just yet, perhaps never. If we do walk away from an abusive relationship for instance then we still need to remember we cannot walk away from the part of us which got us there in the first place and kept us there; in other words we have to do the painful work or we will just put ourselves in the same situation again.

We may not always get what we want but we always get what we need. Sometimes we have no way of knowing what serves us until many years later; sometimes what grows us the most is pain and courage and suffering; sometimes what makes us happy is the most destructive thing.... ask any drug addict ..... life is what it is and sometimes we cannot walk away and if we do, life just presents us with the same lesson in different form.

If you run from your demons they will follow; turn and face them and they dissolve.