Essential Facts

I have following sayings taped up around my desk at work:

Be present.

Look up from your life.

What you focus on expands.

Embrace change.

You cannot control what happens, but you can control how you react to what happens.

Over the past two years, I've gotten pretty good at some of these. Change doesn't scare the living hell out of me anymore, I recognize that this moment is the one I need to live in because the past is done and the future is beyond my control, and I know that my life is small in contrast to global ills and pains.

It is my life though, and so it does matter. It matters if I am sad or hurt, if I am in need or lonely. My life, though small, is the only one I have to live and therefore it is up to me to choose what that life looks like.

That's where the other two mantras (for lack of a better word) come in. It is damn hard to remember that focusing on the negative things in life only make them expand because the negative stuff is the most insistent when it shows up in my head. I don't lie in bed at night thinking, "gosh, I was awesome today," or "how great was that sunset!". I lie awake fixating on some dumb thing I said or how someone else's decisions may effect or hurt me. How lame is that? There is no one responsible for my happiness but me, so focusing on the things that make me happy should cause those things to expand, right? I'm going to give that more of a shot.

And finally, the last one, the grandaddy of them all. I cannot control what happens, but I can control how I react to what happens. Goodnight if that's not difficult to remember. But, it occurs to me that if I don't start putting that into practice, I may go stark raving nuts. See, I believe there is a plan for my life, and I believe that plan is divinely ordained, that who I am supposed to be is written in the book already and it is my job to learn enough, be humble enough, and work hard enough to be the best version of that woman as I possibly can be, and fixating on what may or may not happen in the future isn't going to make me any better,it isn't going to teach me anything (except perhaps how to dwell & I could already teach a class on that), and it isn't going to get me any closer to being the best version of myself.

So, today I vow to love myself enough to let go of all pretense about who I would be, what should happen, and when I will figure it all out.

In the words of Henri Frederic Amiel:    
“Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the ploughshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring...”