perception

today's daily quote from alan cohen:

Perception is a mirror, not a fact.

-- A Course in Miracles

I've been feeling keenly aware of this in the past few days. Most of what has been solid in my life is currently in transition, and there are lots of opportunities for me to tell myself stories about the meaning of various circumstances and events.

For example: I posted my profile on match and not one man contacted me in the first 24 hours. Stories? Oh yeah, I got 'em. I'm too old, I'm not attractive enough, no one will ever want me again, this is a mistake, I should just cancel and resign myself to being single, yadda yadda yadda.

And maybe one of those stories happens to be the truth, but it would only be by coincidence if it was, and only time will tell anyway. What I know in this moment is that when I tell myself those stories, and I believe them as if they were facts, it hurts. And my feelings are pretty raw already, so who needs that?

So I am faced with a choice this morning. Hide my profile and go back into my little shell where I can't feel anyone 'rejecting' me, or question my perceptions. Yeah, maybe I am too old for this. And so what? Then no one will contact me, and so be it.

Or maybe it's closer to the truth that I am just not ready yet. Or maybe the man who will be my next love is on vacation this week. You get the idea. There's an infinite variety of stories I could tell -- no need to fixate my mind on only the painful ones.

I haven't yet decided what to do about this. In fact, right now, I am stubbornly declaring my refusal to decide. When and if I feel the impulse to hide my profile, I will, and I will decide in the moment, not ahead of time.

And in the meantime, this a stellar opportunity to look in the mirror and notice what I think about myself when I don't have the input of someone else's love and appreciation, and the distraction of loving and appreciating someone else. I might have forgetten how to do those things for myself. Now is the perfect time to brush up on my skills. (LOL - whenever I type the word "skills" I hear it in the voice of Napoleon Dynamite. makes it kinda hard to take myself seriously.)

postscript, six hours later:
I cancelled my membership. But not because of the reasons I talked about earlier in this post. I'm definitely NOT going back into my shell. I had lunch with a dear friend who reminded me of one of my favorite mottos: if it's not fun, don't do it! Last time I was on match, I loved being there. Since I don't feel that way this time, the message is clear: get me outta here! I'm off to find something more interesting to do. I'm thinking salsa dancing sounds like fun ...

post postscript, the next morning:
Well, since my membership won't die until mid Feb, Kevin encouraged me to just play around with it by unhiding myself again and experimenting with different pictures, captions, profile texts, etc. to see what kind of response they get. He knows I can't resist a good experiment! And it sounded like fun. So off I went to unhide myself and change my heading to "I sing in the car", and within an hour, two people contacted me. So my motto If it's not fun, don't do it seems to be serving me well! And if it becomes not fun again, I'll either hide my profile and take a break, or change it until it feels like play again. Or not! My friend and I got a good laugh out of this sentence that popped out of my mouth a few weeks ago: "I am free to violate my own principles any time I feel like it! I just made them up anyway ..."