Oh my goodness, how did it get to be 10:20 and I am just starting to write? This is how time gets away from me. I want to amend my opening line from yesterday’s blog, from “Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug,” to “Sometimes you’re the windshield and the bug…” As in, at the same time. (My brother once responded to this statement with, “Sometimes you’re the lions, sometimes you’re the Christians…” but that seemed a little more gruesome, so I’ll stick with windshields and bugs.) And, giving credit where it is due, the line comes from the song “The Bug” by Mary Chapin Carpenter. The gist of the line is that sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Perhaps it’s the Dickensian notion of “the best of times, the worst of times.”
All of that sounds cryptic and dramatic, I suppose, which is not my intent. The past couple of days have been a wild ride of ups and downs and side-to-side craziness. It would appear that Mephistopheles the Mechanical Bull has been pressed back into service and we went for a little ride. I am pleased to report, however, that in spite of being whipped back and forth in bone-jarring, tongue biting, epic event, I hung on for the requisite 8 seconds before letting go, sailing through the air and landing neatly on my feet. Take that, Mephisto! Metaphorically speaking, riding the mechanical bull is about dealing with emotionally, mentally, physically challenging circumstances that can feel like various aspects of life are spinning wildly around and it’s difficult to keep up with let alone make sense of them. There are dynamics and unnamed tensions, politics, problems to be solved, relationship issues to be navigated. And, in the midst of and in spite of the drama that plays out from time to time, there’s also a lot of cool, positive, creative, generative things happening that make everything interesting and exciting, that tell me I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.
I suppose the moral of this particular story is that in this life you’re going to get a little bit of everything thrown at you: the good, the bad, and the ugly. If you can be prepared for that and be determined not to get too bent out of shape when it goes down, then you’re ahead of the game. I am grateful to be learning the skills and developing the capacities to handle much of what gets thrown at me at any given time. That is not to say that I don’t get caught off guard; this happens with a fair amount of regularity. What it simply means is that I don’t get knocked off center for long before I regain some sense of equilibrium and can get back into some kind of rhythm. This is of course dependent on the nature of the particular setback. When I got knocked off my feet at the beginning of 2011, those events were so significant that I was off balance for quite some time and it took a while before the effects of all of that began to subside and my soul began to heal.
I am so grateful for the distance I’ve come over the past few years. I resonate with the sentiment that says, “I may not be where I want to be, but I’m definitely not where I used to be,” and “I’ve come too far to turn back now.” Each experience, each setback, each victory, triumph, disappointment, accomplishment, failure, etc. is woven into the tapestry that is my life. They are to be valued for the gifts they are.
Sometimes you’re the windshield and the bug at the same time. But no matter what end of things I find myself, I manage to come through on the other side with greater clarity and understanding. And for all that, I am most definitely grateful.
