Becoming Accustomed to Your Environment

I was recently in a bathroom that had an option to use a red light instead of the standard issue 3300–5500K one. It was late at night and I choose it to keep the light dimmer than it would have ordinarily been. I was tired and seeking a dim solution. As The longer I stayed in the bathroom with the door closed with the red light on, the less red the light became. I’d been in there before with the light on and kept the door cracked to the outside world of colored light, but in this circumstance the only light source was the red light. The red slowly shifted from red, to orange, to tan. I was only in the bathroom for a few minutes and wondered if I had stayed in the bathroom how much closer to natural light the color would have become.

This reminds me of the colored glasses. I never bought the full set, but I did end up with a green, orange, and purple pair of chakra glasses. I bought those particular ones because of their ability to help with depression. I’d wear my green glasses for a while and the world would be so green when I put them on, then it would normalize some, then after removing the glasses, everything back in the real world would be so pink. At least that’s what my perception of the colors was. Was I really seeing pink or was perception of realty shifting from what I was used to to what I was getting used to? Was I seeing the world through rose colored glasses with my green glasses off?

Our perception of the world shifts based on our experiences, take our neighbor for example. Our neighbor said he saw a man hanging around on the curb near to our house with a leash in his hands for two hours. He thought he was casing our house trying to steal our dog. I immediately shifted in to a fear state to match his perception. Then I stepped back, and reconsidered because I thought I’d saw that man and knew him vaguely from around the neighborhood. What if it was just a man enjoying some time underneath one of our trees? What if he wasn’t holding a leash? What if it was a few minuets instead of a few hours?

I do think our neighbor has a less hopeful view of the world than I do and I typically like to give people the benefit of the doubt, so after a few hours of fear I moved on and tried to not live in a fear state of dognappers lurking outside my windows.

Another example is my mom. I was exposed to the fear my mom had for me being kidnapped and sold into sex slavery from a young age. When Taken came out, things did not get better. She still keeps insisting that I need to watch that movie and I believe I do not.

Even as a 30 year old woman, I still have an inborn fear from my mother that someone is trying to kidnap and steal me from my life. I relayed this to a friend at a yoga retreat and he asked me why? Most likely because my mom thought it for so many years, I was around it, and tried my best to protect myself. I was used to the situation I’d been surrounded by for so long, like when red became the normal coloration of the world.

I’m still more careful than I believe I should be, I try my best not to talk to unaccompanied men when I’m out by myself and haven’t yet made my way into a van because there was candy in it…although I did live in my friends van for a couple days…but so far my existence has proved to me that I’m not kidnapped, why can’t I shift fully into believing that my past track record should indicate my future results. Hopefully at this point I’m too old to be kidnapped, sold into sex slavery perhaps, but I think they too want a younger demographic.

What you surround yourself with, weather it be a fear, a reality, or a color becomes your existence and it is hard to shake from that reality into a new one. Waking up to realizing you are surrounded by that way of coloring your life is the first step to becoming aware, the next step is to address it like I am with my kidnapping fear. The next step, which I’ve been slowly working on for years now is to overcome and leave that story in your past, if you choose to. It is an option and you don’t have to. Perhaps you aren’t ready to move on and lead a new life yet, but here’s your first hint to your new existence: what has been a limiting belief holding you from living the life you want to live? Were you told as a child you weren’t creative and never went after working in the arts? Here’s your chance to recognize, acknowledge, let go, and move on if you choose to. What fears are holding you back?

Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash