Have You Learned Your Lesson Yet?

I've been thinking a lot lately. Like more than usual. I've been thinking about how I wish that I were further along in my weight loss efforts and my higher education efforts and my financial goals and my house decorating...you get the picture , right?

So then I start thinking about what Pema Chodron says about being impatient with the present and wanting a different reality, even though nothing can end until we have learned what the situation has to teach us. I like to try and be efficient sometimes, so I start asking myself, "OK self, what are you supposed to be learning right now?" You know, so I can learn my lesson and move on. And then it hits me like a two by four in the back of the head...I have no idea what lesson I am supposed to be learning. Should I just invent one or two or six? Because I certainly can. I can think of all kinds of things I should have "understood" by now. But maybe, for right now it is just about doing in the moment we have and moving forward with faith.

There is just one thing that I really may not have been able to understand without my current situation and struggle. There are many people that are able to care about me, to care about me deeply and push me to be the very best version of me. However, I am the only person who can ever be charged with caring for me. This is my body and my life and I have to learn how to show it love with the decisions that only I am able to make for it. Duh, right? Well, somehow that particular good common sense slipped by me. The greatest (and hardest) love of all might be self love.