Where Do You Dwell?

Thinkers Think.

Writers Write.

Dwellers…dwell?

Okay, that doesn’t make sense. But, the word dwell has been bouncing around in my head (again) lately. It reminded me of an Instagram post I did in April 2017. I posed this question: Where Do You Dwell?

The thought I shared was this:

I’ve been asking myself, what am I dwelling on? What do my thoughts continually go back to?
Naturally, my mind wandered to what I see on social media every day. There is a reason why people share the things that they do. There’s a reason why they react the way they do. It’s because, for many, it comes from where they dwell.

When I’m frustrated or angry, sad or confused, and the reasons for those reactions don’t make any sense, I need to step back and ask myself where am I dwelling, what am I dwelling upon. Am I dwelling on something that happened earlier in the day? Am I dwelling on past hurt or past events? Am I dwelling on past failure or challenge? It might be time for me to leave that dwelling place, no matter how comfortable it may be & let it go.

Maybe this thought is for someone else out there: Where do you dwell?

What am I dwelling upon? Whatever my mind is focused on, that is where I am dwelling. I exist there (DS9 reference). I live in that dwelling place – be it joy, anger, sadness, frustration, hope, expectation, loneliness, bitterness, selfishness, jealousy.

Pick one and ask yourself, is that where I dwell? I ask this question because I’m not sure how many people understand this correlation between where they dwell and their daily life.

One day on Twitter, several/multiple sports media people were weighing on a very non-sports topic. They have a platform and they aren’t afraid to use it, so they went off. I distinctly remember another sports media member say, People are angry.

It wasn’t just that they were angry, but they were tired and angry. As a result, they weren’t going to be quiet any longer. About anything.

They were/are tired and angry. That’s where they dwell. Day in, day out. You see it in their tweets. You read it in their writing. You hear it in their voice. Even when they try to sound happy or joyful, there’s still a hint of anger.

Can you imagine that? Dwelling in anger. I’m not just talking a day or two. They have been dwelling in anger for decades.

DECADES!

Having heard some of the stories, one can understand the anger. The pain that has been inflicted upon them has, in some cases, been horrendous. They are angry and they want change.

Anger can be a catalyst for change. What happens when the change they long for happens? If that’s all it was – the anger – surely there would be healing at some point, right?

Not if that is where they dwell.

When one dwells in anger over something done to them, they gravitate toward others like them. They empathize with them and often times, take others’ offenses as their own.

I’m all for empathy. I’m all for righteous anger. I’m all for calling things out that are wrong in the world — and acting upon them. What I’m not for is taking someone else’s pain as my own.

Pain sucks. Getting hurt sucks. Abuse, mistreatment, abandonment, rejection, neglect, oppression — yeah, in a word they all SUCK! Actions committed against us can have damaging effects on our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual well-being. They can mess with our lives beyond imagination.

At some point, however, we have to allow healing, don’t we? We have to move beyond the hurt and pain, otherwise we wind up dwelling there.