Obsession

Often when someone thinks of or talks about obession, his/her thoughts run in the direction of deep emotion, often passion. Calvin Klein himself named a fragrance after the word, with the intention of soliciting images of fierce preoccupation and desire. More often than not, however, obession has a much darker side, resulting in such preoccupation and intensity of feelings, that abnormal and/or extreme behavior surfaces leading towards a spiral down into destruction.

Speaking from personal experience, I know all about obsession. In fact, if being honest with myself, I would say that more often than not, when I do something it turns into an obsession for me, whether it be shopping, talking about fragrance, going on the internet, this blog, the former make-up site I used to belong to, being on ebay, smoking, drinking or finding a topic to discuss and not letting go. The result has been a preoccupation with such people, places and/or things, that I am robbed of my own time and so are others around me. If the obsession involves a person, the result will often be a dramatic distincing of oneself, resulting in extreme behavior. For example, if someone is sexually or emotionally obessed with someone else, the reaction may turn into a type of distant, detatached admiration. Why can people not react in a balanced way and just be kind, gentle and loving?

Obsession takes me away from self, God, love and service. Having given up smoking, drinking, shopping on ebay, and to a large extent the fragrance board, most of the obsessions that are described above have disappeared from my life completely, and those that have not, have been tempered (going on the fragrance site and shopping.) When inside the realm of obsession, the subject or object takes over my thoughts and actions completely, leaving little room of anything else. Thankfully, I do, to a large extent, live a balanced life today for the most part.

For me, knowing when I am being obsessive means that I must be honest with myself. Dealing with obsession has been about learning how to be more in touch with the intensity of feelings and actions. It also means that I must step completely back, and take a real look at what is going on inside. Often times, I must stop myself in my tracks and retreat completely to gain some balance back.

These past couple of weeks, I feel as if I have become obsessive about blogging. Some of it has coincided with the death of my father, and some of the other personal painful issues that we have had to deal with this year, I understand. But if I am truly honest with myself, the blog has become not so much about allowing myself to write each and every day (which was how it started) as much as it has become about wanting to know what people 'out there in blogsville' think or have to say about my writing. After writing yesterday, I was even thinking about adding a blog counter, which is how my thinking about being obsessed with blogging began. Consequently, I have robbed myself and family of time that could have been used to pay attention to them. Additionally, I have been robbing my soul of the connection that needs to be made so that I can be a person of true love to God, to self, to others.

Here is the question of the day: Are you obsessed with anything in particular? What are the positive and negative sides of obsession for you, your loved ones and friends? Can you share a time when obsesion has been good for you? What about not so good?

After coming to this realization, for today, I am going to be taking a break from blogging for a little while in the hopes of becoming rebalanced once again. For those of you who are observing Tisha B'av, as you mourn, I wish you an easy fast.

Thank you for your minds.