I was walking all through this house looking at everything. I found myself in the middle of an argument between two older children about fighter pilots and who was going to win World War II. We had an older brother?, uncle? who also lived in the house, off fighting and I wandered into his room, which was just like he left it. I picked up a brush and saw a letter. It was then I saw, what I believed to be a mobile diorama above my head of Japanese and American airplanes, in a dog fight. There was lots more to the dream but the important part was, I woke up thinking about catch-22's.
How Does All That Seem Random
A quick search revealed Heller's book Catch-22. I've never read the book, but according to Wikipedia "it's is a satirical, historical novel by the American author Joseph Heller, first published in 1961. The novel, set during the later stages of World War II from 1943 onwards, is frequently cited as one of the great literary works of the twentieth century. It has a distinctive non-chronological style where events are described from different characters' points of view and out of sequence so that the time line develops along with the plot" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22).
Wikipedia goes on to say that Catch 22 refers "to absurd, no-win choices, particularly in situations in which the desired outcome of the choice is an impossibility, and regardless of choice, the same negative outcome is a certainty" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Heller).
To put it less elegantly it's that place where you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. So I say just be damned and get on with it.
When, make that, if we are honest with ourselves, the situations we label as catch 22 always have a third, fourth, fifth even tenth option we are choosing to be unaware of until we decide to become aware of it.
<Quick Aside> That whole thing about not being aware of something until you're aware of it is just weird right. Because usually it's always been there or at least the concept of it has been there for a while and yet we couldn't choose to or didn't want to see it. Other people see it though and they sometimes wrongly assume we do too. The people who see it either don't point it out or when/ if they do point it out we choose to continue denying that they've pointed it out. We dismiss it because it doesn't fit with the choices we want to allow ourselves. It's as if all those other choices just don't exist for us. </Quick Aside>
So what do catch 22's have to do with the randomosity?
Well...
Making the Connection
There was a whole diatribe describing my week but the salient and necessary point turned out to be this:
The universe provided a little nudge and said, here is a really tiny sliver of X, the same X you keep talking about having, doing, being. And my response to that tiny sliver of X went something like this: ugh, uh no, nunh unh, gah get X away from me. I don't want to have, be or do X like that. Can't I have, be, do X some other way?
and then my subconscious? unconscious? provided the answer.
No. Who do you think you are to not accept the X being provided? Especially after you've spent all this time asking for X this way and all these random events have conspired to bring you X the way you asked for it and now you don't want it?
A clowder is a group of adult cats. Yeah here is when random cats show, in the middle of the road and not moving out of the middle of the road as a big huge Eddie Baur Expedition barrelled towards them. No movement. None except eyes seeing me, watching me. Then when we left 10 minutes later even more cats in the middle of the road, unmoving as a Centurian rolls past.
Hmm, curious child in a dream, lots of cats maintaining their position surrounding something captured possibly, oh, yeah, it's time to get curious.
- Is that true, I really don't want X or just don't want X the way X was coming to me, even though I was asking for X to come that way?
- If I don't want X the way that way, am I wrong as in are the people I want to use X to serve going to look at me like I'm a flake for changing my mind and asking for X to come some different way?
- Am I being ungrateful for X by not accepting it and being happy with it, taking it the way it's coming?
- What is this belief that I have to accept X the way it's coming or I'm being ungrateful?
Asking those questions and having those epiphanies (were those epiphanies?) brought up some of my other stuff.
The need to be invisible, the lack of trust, the self-doubt, avoidance and fear that I'll be found out.
If X is bringing all that up, do I really want to deal with all that to get the right, best X for me? Would you, if you knew that dealing with it and moving forward even if they are ItyBites is what it takes so you can have, do and be X?
Dissolution of the Catch-22.
There is no catch 22 and yet knowing that to keep moving towards X, requires dealing with emotional stuff and ending the over/double thinking, changing the engrained bad habits and poor patterns of thought certainly makes it feel like "no-win choices...[where] the same negative outcome is a certainty".
Yet, I'm studying people, who have overcome everything and more than I'm facing. So there is no catch 22 and there is a lot of information, helpfully seemingly random information available to us, all the time.
It's up to us to make the decision to see.
Whatever it takes, right?
With that, what random events have shown up in your life, that aren't really random at all?
* X is pretty much anything you've decided and committed yourself to doing, whether publicly and/or privately.
--
LaShae
