Wanting to Rewind the Clock – The Lows That Follow Highs

Family times which are long thought-of and planned-for, much-vaunted and highly anticipated times, pass as quickly as they approached. It’s understandable that afterward we’re left empty and reflective. What was surreal at the time is now gone, but for the memory.

Perhaps we hadn’t expected such a low cloud to form over our hearts.

Never mind, we’ve had our time and now life’s to return to ‘normal’. It pays to remember that normal life is (and was) an acceptable reality and those feelings remind us how important good family times are.

Processes of Re-Adjusting

Wanting to rewind the clock and relive those moments is normal. What we face now is the grieving process in typical swing; just on a micro scale compared with the death of a loved one or divorce etc.

Adjusting to life as it was—an oft-resented reality in reflective mode—just takes time. A day or a week and all will be as it was. Perhaps we wanted to be ‘more’ for people we care for than we were. This too is normal. (Isn’t it peculiar that we don’t think of these sorts of things at the time?)

Re-adjusting can be a sorrowful process that highlights—in undesirable ways—how things might have been if the high time had never occurred in the first place. We seek to protect ourselves. Hopefully this temptation is resisted, for in life where there’s no risk there’s no return. What we hope to gain we stand to lose. It’s inevitable.

Hope – The Portent to Be Re-Built

There’s always an answer in hope. This one thing gets us beyond the pain of emptiness and looking to heaven for more; the future begins to command a hearing, not just the past.

Hope allows enjoyment of thought regarding the good times had—in the relative safety of conscience. With hope, we wade through recent memory and just appreciate.

Abiding truths persist through life. One of them is low times follow high times. It’s better to weigh consideration of this before and during the high time rather than simply let it blindside us afterwards.

Expectations meet hope in rationality. It’s only when expectations have reached inflation point that the truth bursts our bubble of hope. Balances must be restored.

Keeping expectations in check, and enjoying what simply ‘is,’ is the key.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.