Dag 98: Imagination and Why the Law of Attraction doesn't Work
I recently remembered a specific event in my life that took place about 5 years ago. My high school used to organise summercamps for the students who wanted to go - and I went with several times. The last time I went with, I sprained my ankle during the holiday. The teacher then told us we were going to do a 2-day hike in the mountains. I've done 2-day and 3-day hikes in the mountains before, on different summercamps - and, from what I knew, a 2-day hike or a 3-day hike is always kind of the same - where you walk up a mountain, where in the end you have to kind of climb the last bit, because it gets very rocky, often there's also snow or ice. When you get to the top, there's a cabin where you then have your supper and sleep to then wake up bright and early the next day and do the descent if it's a 2-day hike and if it's a 3-day hike, you descend and climb another mountain as well, stay the night at another cabin and then come down on the third day. So - with that in mind, I told the teacher: Well, I won't go with then. And he said: What? Of course you're going with. I explained to him that, with a swollen and sprained ankle, I wouldn't be able to handle it and that I'll just stay at the house we were staying at. He said that was out of the question and that I'd definitely be able to handle it. He said it would just be a road that goes along a mountain and then there's a cabin where we'd sleep and then take the same road down. He made it sound like we were 'going for a walk' on a tar road. I explained to him what I knew of 2-day and 3-day hikes and that if it's anything like that, there was no way I would be able to do it. He re-assured me that it was nothing like that, something very easy that anyone would be able to do. I also asked him then if sneakers would be fine to wear, instead of hiking boots and he said 'yeah, sure, that's fine!'.
So - this teacher was going to walk in the front and another teacher was going to walk at the back with me and two other girls who weren't physically feeling too well at the time. And, yes - it starts of like the kind of walk he described, where there's a relatively flat road going along the mountain. But quite soon, we noticed this road become smaller and smaller and it quickly shrank into a little mountain trail. When this happened I knew that what the teacher had explained to me was not what was going to happen. I started become annoyed, frustrated and angry, because he hadn't checked his information and just assumed that he knew what it would be like - and now it was too late for me to stay behind - I had to get up that mountain before sun-down. From here things just escalated in myself - for the rest of the climb, wherein I twice slipped and hurt my ankle again because I was wearing slippery sneakers on wet rocks (Yes, it had started raining as well!) - for the rest of the climb I was just imagining what I would say to that teacher once I'd get up to that cabin.
Man - I went over a hundred different scenarios - and in each one I was pissed off, in some I would give him the silent treatment, in others I was shouting and screaming, in others I slapped him in the face. This teacher had by the way also become a personal friend, so that's why I was even more infuriated and why I'd consider things like slapping him - lol. The entire time - my face was just tight with rage - like I was ready to kill someone and time after time I'd imagine these scenarios of what I would do, what he would respond, whether he'd fight me on the issue or whether he'd say nothing. I would also often hear his voice from a distance - because, obviously, me, the two girls and the other teacher had fallen quite a bit behind on the rest of the group - and I'd hear him signing or making jokes. So - that put even more fuel on the fire, because he was having a good time where I was suffering and it seemed like he didn't care or didn't notice. So - those things I wanted to throw at his face as well - I had several entire speeches prepared and kept tweaking them over and over.
By the last bit, of the climb, my entire body was shaking, I was cold and exhausted - I have no idea how I managed to get up there with my swollen ankle! Then, when finally arriving at the cabin, I was entirely pumped up and ready to give him a piece of my mind. I walked into the cabin and into the dining area where the others were already waiting. He sees me and walks up to me and as I'm trying to put on my angriest face, he says 'I AM SO SORRY'. As he said that, I just started crying and crying - he came up and gave me a hug. He was kind of half laughing because of the absurdity of what I'd just done and what he'd put me through - but I didn't get angry, instead I laughed with him - while I was still crying. I punched my fist twice in his arm as to say 'you asshole' - to which he laughed more and me too. He was a big guy, so don't worry, he could take it - lol. He then told me to go sit down, asked how I was doing and then brought me a hot chocolate. And that was that. My body heated up, the meal gave me my strength back and I enjoyed the company. All the anger and screaming and conflict that I had imagined would take place, just vanished as soon as I was actually in the actual real moment I had been imagining about.
It didn't matter how hard I thought about what would happen, it didn't matter how much fervor, anger, energy I put into it, it didn't matter how often I repeated my imaginings - when it came to reality - the imaginations were completely irrelevant and didn't match reality at all! It showed me how I had really wasted so much of my energy during the climbing of the mountain, placing my attention in my head, in an imaginary realm, instead of looking where I was going - especially with a sprained ankle! LOL!
