If you always do what you’ve always done…
you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten
it escapes many people that:
If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.
But change can be unbearable for many people, it means taking a good long, honest look at oneself. Attempting to live out the stereotypes that society has at least publicly acknowledged and approved of has got to be one of the greatest failures that are rarely if ever spoken of by men and women throughout history. Whether it is the rich, famous, and fabulously successful or those relegated to scornful ignominy, I suspect with a high degree of confidence that it is because many have never gained a useful insight into their own… for lack of a better term, “shitheadedness.”
How can one change what one is blissfully unaware of? “Find your passion” we are told. Be a man (or woman) we are told. And yet for most of our lives, we are told, “you have to go along to get along.” This truly sets a dangerous precedent, and aptly exemplifies the old adage “the blind leading the blind.”
If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.
I married, altogether too young and too relationship ignorant, a woman who was also too young and similarly ignorant. Ignorant that is about what the real cost of a truly committed relationship would be.
If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.
Proof of this is born out by this evidence. That first marriage was 44 years ago, we separated after 7 months, after having been together for three years. I had addiction issues that demanded a thoroughly “brutal” self-examination. Character flaws, behavioral triggers, rationalizations, self-deceptions, and spoken and unspoken expectations, realistic and fanciful. It was painful, frightening, and unsuccessful the first several times I attempted these things.
If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.
We divorced, and after a string of similar disastrous relationships, something happened. Something marvelous… change happened, little by little. Then I met someone. Thirty-eight years ago I met someone who I married five months later. It’s been the hardest, best, most joyful, frustrating, interesting, certainly not boring, we’ve ever done.
If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.
My first wife has changed too. She married twice more, divorced twice more, had a child, got a dream job, and can still be found blaming those she meets as potential spouses, so she lives on the edge of calamity by her own choice. I hope one day she sees that if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.