Wednesday Wisdom: I made a bonsai

Have you ever heard someone talking about something you both know in a way that made you wonder if they were talking about the same thing you experienced?

It’s called perspective.  Our brains filter everything we see or know and manipulate it to fit as per our experiences and feelings.

Pretty much how someone manipulates a bonsai to be something it is not, we sometimes form in our heads a much different perception of reality.

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My #bonzai story on: http://wp.me/p297O-1z0 #Introspective #IntrospectiveWriting #blogger #tree

A post shared by @ naramilee on Oct 19, 2016 at 5:31am PDT

I know, because I made my own bonsai.

I wanted to believe I had a good relationship.  I trimmed off all the pain, all the hurtful words.  I made most of it smaller and unimportant and I kept believing I was in a good place.  I could be happy if I just worked harder at it, if I just changed more, if I made everything perfect.

But I couldn’t make anything perfect.  I couldn’t keep bending over backwards and still feel happy. I wasn’t even me anymore.

My relationship was my bonsai.  I made all the suffering much smaller than it really was and I thought it could work that way.

And then one day I stood in front of my bonsai.  I saw it towering over my entire life.  It overshadowed everything that I was, and in front of it I felt small, like I had never felt before.  I felt insignificant and unimportant.

So I stepped away from the shadow of that giant tree that for so long I had tried to make a bonsai and then I started seeing myself again.

I was there, and all of me is much bigger than that tree.