My Crystal Ball Has Gone Missing

When I turned 30 (shhh!), I thought I had figured everything out. So much had changed in my life, I was at the top of my game, high on life, and ready to take on the world. That year in so many ways proved to be one of the best of my life. I discovered who I was, what I was about, and what it was I really wanted.

Or so I thought.

I wouldn’t say I have wavered too far from all that I figured out during my 30th year on this earth, but if 30 showed me who I am and what I want, 31 has shown me the limitations that reality places on both. Like everything else in this world, who I am is subject to change, evolution, breakdown, and alteration. What I want is often dependent on the needs and desires of others, the timing, the place, and (dare I say it?) fate, or if you aren’t a believer in such things, coincidence at the very least.

My 31st year has not been one of the best, indeed, but it hasn’t been the worst either, perhaps only because I can see the silver lining hiding behind all the pain, hurt, ache, and confusion that muddled up the last year or so.

If ever there was a life lesson that proves to be nearly impossible to learn but invaluable if you can grasp it, it is the fact that you can never, will never know the future. You don’t know if you will wake up tomorrow. You don’t know if your job will survive the next week. You don’t know if the one who loves you now will love you always. We don’t control life; we can’t foresee circumstances that are as of yet unknown to us. We can’t control what others do, think, and feel, and so often it is those people we can’t control who directly affect our own lives and well being. You don’t know who will enter your life tomorrow, next week, next month. You don’t know who you will lose with the next breath you take.

I don’t intend for all of this to be depressing. Indeed, the unforeseen can be a positive thing depending on where you are in life, your perspective, and what it is you are needing to find at any given time. Down on your luck? Cling to the fact that your golden ticket could be awaiting you around the next corner. In the depths of despair today? It is almost certainly guaranteed that happiness will find you once again. You can’t see it now, you can’t feel its impending presence, but it is the nature of life. It is the ying and the yang, the balance of all things that exist. That which comes up must come down, only for it to once again raise its head and find itself on the upswing later down the road.
I guess what I am trying to say, the point of all this if there even is one, is that finally figuring all this out, finally seeing that there are no guarantees in life, only imperfect human attempts at happiness and triumph, has changed my perspective on life in dramatic ways and has very much changed who I am and what it is I want and need in my life to make me happy. I feel the remaining vestiges of childhood naïveté that clung to my heels have finally fallen away and while I don’t want to say I am jaded or bitter, I can say my eyes are now definitely wide open. I don’t blame anyone for this; I don’t hold this lesson against any one individual or his or her ilk; it is simply a lesson I had to learn and I took the rough and rugged road in finding the moral of this particular story.

I think that is enough philosophy and dramatization for one evening.

Forget

Forget every “I miss you” that you thought you heard. Forget every “I love you,” I never said those words. Erase the smiles, disregard the tears, you can even forget my name. Forget that I was the only one who gave you everything.


Ignore the pleading and the begging, pretend I didn’t fall. Ignore the questions and the crying, you can even ignore my calls. Pay no attention to what I say I need or want from you. Ignore me even as I promise I’ll always wait for you.


Watch me as I push myself off the cold, hard ground. Watch me finally walk away as I find the strength to move on. Don’t shut your eyes to me or try to hide as I finally find myself. Watch me as I say goodbye and move on with my life.


Now here I am, forgetting the one I will always adore. Now here I am, ignoring the promises he made before. Now here I am, watching as he too walks away. Now here I am finding the strength to anticipate another day.

Out of Control

Ever since beginning this blog last week, I have awakened each day with the thought of writing on my mind, and I get frustrated when a topic just isn’t there. It wasn’t very long ago I told someone else that I would write again when both the urge and a topic collided simultaneously and the words flowed independently onto the screen, yet that sentiment was quickly forgotten to me and there I was, once again trying to force that which needs to happen on its own.

Unfortunately, this seems to be the story of my life and the dominant force behind my own stress and frustration on a daily basis. Indeed, I have major issues with control.

“You can not always control circumstances, but you can control your own thoughts.”

~Charles Popplestown

I know that every single word of the above quote is absolutely true, yet I have a very difficult time remembering it on a regular basis. Upon reading the last blog, a dear friend said, “you are very philosophical.” Without a thought, I replied, “I stay stuck in my head.” In other words, I worry too much about things over which I have absolutely no control. I am a control freak to the nth degree – my classroom has to be organized in a particular way, my lesson plans have to be completed in such a way that I create way too much work for myself, I plan events and get-togethers down to the smallest detail fully knowing they won’t quite work out as planned. All of these are things I can, for the most part, control, so I don’t worry about them too much. It is those things I know I cannot control that consume my mind, often to the point of distraction.

“To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one's family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one's own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.”

~Buddha

I know the above quote to also be true. I set one overall resolution for myself this year, and accepting the above quote as true is a big part of bringing that resolution to fruition. Instead of trying to control that which is outside my reach, I must learn to control my mind. To find happiness and contentment with today, I must stop trying to change the course of tomorrow, especially when no one has any way of knowing what tomorrow has in store. I know this, but can I live this? I can admit to myself that I don’t have control, but can I convince myself that I can’t wrestle control from life itself?

“It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there's nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.”

~Wayne Dyer

And herein lies the problem: worrying about that which I cannot control takes my time, energy, and focus away from those things I can change, those things I can control, and away from being happy today, now, in this moment. I am immobilized. Instead of being productive yesterday, I spent the entire day on autopilot while my brain ached with worries about things beyond my control, things that could happen tomorrow, next week, next month, even next year. Yeah, I was sick too so I wasn’t feeling very productive anyway, yet I let my mind rule the entire day and nothing was accomplished other than reminding myself that I had resolved to stop this nonsense once and for all. “The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.” The activity of worrying is keeping me from taking chances today, from jumping on opportunities that present themselves today because I fear what they will mean for me tomorrow, from being happy today because I fear unhappiness is awaiting around the corner. I can’t continue to live like this, and a little over a year ago, I didn’t live like this. I need to find my way back to honoring today instead of fearing tomorrow.

“I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside.”

~Wayne Dyer

I have to learn that the vast majority of life is made up of circumstances that I cannot control. I have to accept that I cannot change that which is as of yet unknown. I can no longer lose today in fear of tomorrow. Maybe this is why I enjoy my job so much – my kids force me to live in the moment, make me focus on the here and now. Indeed, in a classroom of three-year-olds you cannot anticipate what will happen in the next five minutes, much less tomorrow. My kids bring me into the here and now. Once again, I am left thinking that my little group of preschoolers teaches me way more than I will ever be able to teach them. So here’s to letting go, to happiness in this moment, to letting tomorrow bring what it will bring. I won’t pretend that I will never slip and once again get lost in my head as I attempt to control that which I fear is waiting for me, but it does mean I will make a more conscious effort to stay focused on today, and I will find contentment in being out of control.

To New Beginnings and Lessons Learned . . .

Last weekend I made some very conscious and considered decisions about how I want to live and survive in this new decade. 2008 was one of the best years of my life if not THE best, followed by 2009 which all but shredded all of that personal progress. Or so it would superficially seem.

One of the decisions I made was to listen to the advice of one of the dearest people in my life and return to writing in some form, a hobby that has always been therapeutic to me and which always seems to purge those inner demons that otherwise trip me up and ruin my best efforts at all I wish to accomplish. To begin this new journey, take a quick look at the sidebar to the right, at the little blurb about me and what I intend to do here. I make a brief but hopefully punctuated statement about the alleys and potholes of life being necessary to recognize and appreciate the goodness of the blessings which we receive each and every day. Following that line of thought, 2008 was indeed a grand year. 2009 was not-so-stellar, but it did teach me a few very important things:

1) Don't get lazy. I became too content with the way life was in 2008, and I took it for granted that rose-tinted horizons and golden paths were all that awaited me ahead. Oops. Truth be told, happiness takes work - it takes commitment, dedication, reflection, planning, and appreciation. If you aren't understanding what you have and watching where you are going, you are bound to crash and lose it all.

2) Take time for others. Never think your happiness exists inside of a bubble. The actions of those who surround you day after day can have just as much effect on your happiness as the decisions made by you. Don't be afraid to feel others' hurts and to empathize with others who may not have it quite as good as you do. Don't be so blinded by your own happiness that you forget to nurture others even as you enjoy your own blessings.

3) Happiness isn't free. Often your happiness comes only after the heartbreak of another. No, this isn't fair and it isn't humane, but it isn't necessarily a reflection on your morality either. It is simply life at its worst. The trick is to be careful that you are not unnecessarily causing pain for others. No one else will look out for your happiness if you don't and you will never make another happy if you aren't happy within, so take what you need and nothing more. You know you have crossed the line of scruples and good conscience when you hurt others for amusement.

4) Be thankful. It is when happiness is taken for granted that it seems to slip away in the dark of night, returning only after a long, arduous, dangerous journey. Take time to recognize and appreciate the things that make your life full: family, friends, careers, hobbies, wealth, whatever, or, feeling unloved, unappreciated, and thus unnecessary, they may leave you. If you don't take notice and appreciate them, someone else will.

5) Listen to others and trust yourself. Once you have surrounded yourself with people you love and trust, it often becomes all too easy to rely on their perspectives alone when making the difficult choices in life. Often others in your life are correct and they see better than you what direction you should next travel. Yet if you take a step back and judge your situation for yourself, often you will also make the choice that is right for you. No one else knows best what you are capable of; no one but those involved gets a full grasp of the situation at hand. They key is to balance the two: take into consideration the well-intended perspectives of others as you also listen to your heart and decide just what you are willing and not willing to do next. Then do what is right for you, and do it with no regrets, no turning back, and no second guessing. Trust your own gut-instinct and let it run wild. Even if it fails you this time around, never will you ask, "What if . . .?" (I still struggle with this one.)

6) Happiness is not a right. The "pursuit of happiness" is a right, but happiness itself, not so much. Happiness is not a constant, it needs a rest from time to time, but it will not entirely leave you if you practice diligence, hard work, and keep faith when it does take its unexpected vacations from your life. If you don't trust that it can and will return, you won't make the steps necessary to travel down its path once again. Keep the faith - faith in life, faith in family and friends, faith in humanity in general, and most of all, faith in yourself to see this journey through regardless of how dark it may become. Have faith that the light will always shine once again.

With all of that said, I have faith that I have learned the necessary lessons from 2009, the lessons I was intended to learn before I could continue on in life, and 2010 is going to reward this faith and hope I still possess. I made some changes in my life as of Monday, January 11, 2010, and I have seen them through thus far. All I can do is take it step-by-step, day-by-day, and have faith that I am heading in the direction I promised to myself. And I am okay with that. Coming from a self-proclaimed control freak, that alone is a huge resolution worth some congratulations.

And another resolution completed tonight: the writer's block that has existed within for almost 8 months has been brought to an end. Today has been a fabulous day indeed. :)