Up is Down and In is Out

Sometimes during the course of our lives, it seems that way. Just when you think you've got it, it's gone. Just when you think you know what your future holds, you don't. I wonder if you ever get used to that, say, maybe when you turn 80 or 100. Maybe you just walk through something totally different than what you believed was happening, and you just shake your head and say, "yep, that's it".

Most of us like to have a little plan. You know, something to lean back on during slow times that feels a little like a plush cushion on our backs. Something we can rely on to be there whenever we need to take a break and lean back. When the cushion is gone, why is it such a shock to us that it's not there anymore?

I once took a Myers-Briggs test, and the examiner looked at me and said, "you like things to be in order, to have a reason and a purpose, and your life is totally out of order". Not exactly the kind of thing you want to hear from a guy who is supposed to be evaluating your test results.....the part about your life being out of order.

Some days I get up and I know exactly what I am going to do and when and how. Then ten minutes pass by and not one thing that I had in my plan went the way it was supposed to. That is usually a good indicator of the kind of day I will have.

Maybe one of these days I will turn into one of those people who just seem to roll with the punches, that take each moment as it comes, that turn lemons into lemonade. Today, I am not that person. I mean, it sounds so good in all those Hallmark greeting cards, "take it easy", "change is for the better", and when I'm reading those cards, I really think I can be one of those people. Let things just roll off my back. Not happening.

I need some transcendental meditation, or to spend a month or so with a swami somewhere in India, to get my mind "centered". Maybe that's what it is.

I like to think that I am the kind of person who can survive anywhere under any kind of circumstances. I have survived lots of life circumstances, and am still standing. But sometimes in the middle of all the chaos, all you can see is the chaos, and not the solution.

Rolling with the punches, that's what some people call it. Accepting change, and accepting your lot in life, that's what we are all supposed to do right? Some days when you are ankle deep in buffalo crap, rolling with the punches isn't exactly the first thing that comes to your mind. Generally, it's something along the lines of "get me the hell out of here!"

I'm still working on it. It's an ongoing project, with more time spent entrenched in the muck, than I have left to change it....