It is, of course, great to have it all! And often it appears that some people do. This can lead to us feeling inadequate and resentful. I would venture to suggest however, that even those who appear to have it all, rarely do. No matter how much they may appear to have the perfect life, health and happiness everyone has their challenges. They may just be less visible to the outside observer.
I think in life there is generally a ‘flip side to the coin’ phenomenon, which decrees that we can never have it all. If we have heads, we cannot have tails and vice versa.
Take dyslexia for example. A ‘learning difficulty’ it causes huge problems in the classroom for kids and teachers and knock-on effect for parents as affected kids struggle to achieve in line with their peers despite evident intellectual ability. The book ‘The Dyslexic Advantage’ taught me to look at this in a whole new way. The dyslexic brain is built differently. Not wrong, just differently. As we are well aware from the profiles of multiple high achievers including Einstein and Peter Jackson (producer of the hugely successful and unrivalled films of The Lord of the Rings), the dyslexic brain can be phenomenal. It is built to analyse things from scratch. This facilitates problem solving abilities that we mere humans marvel at! But it comes at a price: the brain finds it much harder to automate processes and therefore tackles each problem anew as if never before encountered. This lack of automation enables each step to be re-evaluated and appraised and so novel approaches can be adopted, whilst most of us process on automatic and therefore miss the multiple opportunities to do it differently, perhaps more productively and often better.
I believe this phenomenon is applicable to multiple different forms of neurodevelopmental disorders including autistic spectrum disorder and attention deficit disorder. This is not to underestimate the huge challenges people with these differences face, but to see them in a different light and look for the flip side of the coin: the often rare and very special attributes that accompany their difficulties. It may be that one cannot exist without the other. And the differences challenge us all to see things differently. We are continually evolving and our world is rapidly changing and I would venture to suggest that one of the things we can learn is that life has become too fast. Generally we do not listen enough to what our bodies and senses are telling us. We override these signals to our detriment. And the senses of those with neurodevelopmental disorders are often far more highly tuned and therefore easily overwhelmed. If we can try to slow down a bit and listen in to what these attributes are trying to teach us I am convinced we will learn invaluable lessons. Our children will not be the same as us. They will be more highly evolved and have a higher reach than we do, especially if we can maximise their opportunities to shine in their individual ways. Homeopathy is a beautiful way to minimise the difficulties these highly tuned individuals experience and enhance their abilities.
The flip side to the coin has further relevance. Life often presents us with choices. Often these choices are prompted by finite resources, especially the two key resources of time and money. Can we learn to see the gift in these choices? When we can have it all, we have a tendency to spread ourselves thinly and fail to appreciate the full beauty and meaning of what we do have. The beautiful poem by Rumi, The Guest House, teaches us that everything in life comes as a lesson. If we learn from that lesson, we progress. If we do not, the lesson will come up repeatedly, slapping us ever more obviously in the face each time, until we do learn it. Often a choice prompts us to prioritise and this can push us down paths we might not otherwise have chosen and take us to places we would never have reached. We can be absolutely sure that these places will be beneficial for us. Even if the way is sometimes rocky. Choose wisely and know why you are making your choice. For when you have the right motivations in making your decision (not through fear, not through jealousy and not from a perceived duty to those to whom we owe nothing) the decision can only be the right one.
So next time you feel inclined to feel jealous of someone else’s apparently blissful existence remember that all may not be as it seems. We all have our individualised challenges and lessons to learn and we are all on a different path. And if we can look for the lesson in the challenge and learn it, we will doubtless receive the reward that is unique to us and far more meaningful than merely having it all.