Blizzards and Mud
posted by Anne Stuart
on
Monday, June 18, 2007
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First off, aren't we gorgeous? I found my most flattering picture (and trust me, that really is Anne Stuart) and we have our snazzy new layout. In honor of it (and because my children decided not to self-destruct this week after all) I'm going to pass on the secret of the universe.
Life isn't fair.
Yeah, I know, it should be. But we all know that no good deed goes unpunished, only the good die young, bad things happen to good people, etc. And the problem is, if we have any kind of moral center at all we go through life trying to act as if life is fair. Because if we're fair, honorable, generous, work very very hard at our craft, give of ourselves, we assume the universe will play the same way.
But it doesn't work that way. Sometimes life just stinks. People die, brilliant books tank, bad diseases crop up just when life is getting better. And to quote my dour husband, all we get in Vermont is blizzards and mud.
But in Vermont you also get clear, beautiful summer days, you get autumn with glorious leaves, you get magic snowfalls and clean air and beautiful mountains and crystal clear lakes. It just depends on how you look at it.
The secret to life is It Ain't Far. But the secret to getting through life is to pretend that it is.
Eventually the snow melts, the mud dries up, and as a special gift from the universe we get maple syrup to sweeten our days.
And when someone dies we mourn, and grieve, for the rest of our lives really, but we also take joy in the time we had with them. Bad diseases can be cured, and hell, if a brilliant book tanks then sooner or later it will be rediscovered, or you'll write another brilliant book, or at the very worst you'll cut off your ear and then kill yourself but you'd still be Van Gogh.
From the vantage point of my ancient 59 years, I can see that there are a million bad things that I can't change, a hundred bad things that I can. But I'll still work to change the hundred bad things that are in my control.
If you're trapped by those bad things, I have a couple of suggestions.
The Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland made it a habit to believe in "6 impossible things before breakfast." Words of wisdom from a homidal old bat.
Believe in the impossible, and act as if the world is fair. You might trick the fates into believing you.
And you need a soundtrack. In church we have hymns -- All Things Bright and Beautiful, Morning Has Broken, all sorts of lovely, joyful things.
You can have your own hymns. Songs that make you feel like soaring (and driving too fast if you're listening to them in the car). Make yourself a mix of happy songs for your mp3 player.
Rejoice. If this life is blizzards and mud, spring will come eventually.
Here endeth the sermon.
And now discussion time. Anyone have any tricks for dealing with the rampant unfairness of life? Kick a door? Dance naked around the house? Sing "Anarchy in the UK'? (one of my favorite coping mechanisms). Curl up in bed and reread your favorite Georgette Heyer?
We all need help. Give us some suggestions!
Life isn't fair.
Yeah, I know, it should be. But we all know that no good deed goes unpunished, only the good die young, bad things happen to good people, etc. And the problem is, if we have any kind of moral center at all we go through life trying to act as if life is fair. Because if we're fair, honorable, generous, work very very hard at our craft, give of ourselves, we assume the universe will play the same way.
But it doesn't work that way. Sometimes life just stinks. People die, brilliant books tank, bad diseases crop up just when life is getting better. And to quote my dour husband, all we get in Vermont is blizzards and mud.
But in Vermont you also get clear, beautiful summer days, you get autumn with glorious leaves, you get magic snowfalls and clean air and beautiful mountains and crystal clear lakes. It just depends on how you look at it.
The secret to life is It Ain't Far. But the secret to getting through life is to pretend that it is.
Eventually the snow melts, the mud dries up, and as a special gift from the universe we get maple syrup to sweeten our days.
And when someone dies we mourn, and grieve, for the rest of our lives really, but we also take joy in the time we had with them. Bad diseases can be cured, and hell, if a brilliant book tanks then sooner or later it will be rediscovered, or you'll write another brilliant book, or at the very worst you'll cut off your ear and then kill yourself but you'd still be Van Gogh.
From the vantage point of my ancient 59 years, I can see that there are a million bad things that I can't change, a hundred bad things that I can. But I'll still work to change the hundred bad things that are in my control.
If you're trapped by those bad things, I have a couple of suggestions.
The Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland made it a habit to believe in "6 impossible things before breakfast." Words of wisdom from a homidal old bat.
Believe in the impossible, and act as if the world is fair. You might trick the fates into believing you.
And you need a soundtrack. In church we have hymns -- All Things Bright and Beautiful, Morning Has Broken, all sorts of lovely, joyful things.
You can have your own hymns. Songs that make you feel like soaring (and driving too fast if you're listening to them in the car). Make yourself a mix of happy songs for your mp3 player.
Rejoice. If this life is blizzards and mud, spring will come eventually.
Here endeth the sermon.
And now discussion time. Anyone have any tricks for dealing with the rampant unfairness of life? Kick a door? Dance naked around the house? Sing "Anarchy in the UK'? (one of my favorite coping mechanisms). Curl up in bed and reread your favorite Georgette Heyer?
We all need help. Give us some suggestions!
Patricia Potter
Tara Taylor Quinn
Maggie Shayne
Anne Stuart
Suzanne Forster
Lynn Kerstan
6 Comments :
I have this one Abraham CD I've been listening to daily, and sometimes twice a day. It talks about how when you're in despair, you're attracting more despair, and the advice to "get happy" is just irritating, and that it's impossible anyway from that state, so the goal instead is to reach for relief. If you can do something, anything, to distract yourself from what's making you feel despair, at least for those moments, you stop attracting more despair, and instead attract more relief, and if you can keep building on that, you can change the flow and soon leave the despair behind and start reaching for something better than just relief.
It helps me for several hours, and then I hit bottom again, but then I listen to it again, and so on.
www.abraham-hicks.com I just subscribed to the weekly CDs, because I'm wearing out the ones I have, and right now, they're the only things really helping.
Brillian post, Anne! Love that picture too. Sorry I got here late. I tend to short-circuit on Mondays, and it just hit me that I hadn't dropped by yet.
I think the first step for me in coping with the unfairness of life was simply to accept that it is unfair. That made certain things easier to accept. It wasn't God or Mother Nature out to get me or anyone else. It was just life, being unfair again.
I also console myself that even though it doesn't always work out that hard work and good samaritanism pay off, it often does. Life seems to me to be more fair than unfair, and there is some Karmic balance. But I love your solutions, especially the church music!
Suz
Of coarse LIFE isn't fair, at least some of the time. When it's a might oppressive, I like to sit on a wicker rocker on our front deck and listen to the four wind chimes hanging nearby. If the breeze is strong enough, the low, low one chimes in and starts to bring life back to normal.
Louis
Louis, I loved your comment. You've figured out something really important - if we listen for the low tones, we can get back in sync. They're always there, we just so often let them get drowned out by focusing on other things.
As far as dealing with life's unfairness, like Suz, the first thing that helped me was simply accepting that it was. I stopped trying to make it fair. Stopped beating my head against a brick wall and started living with the reality of what was.
Coping with the unfairness is another challenge. One I'm currently struggling with. My coping skills of thirty years was silence. To go inside myself, hold myself close and buffer me from the world. I'd distract myself with a shopping expedition, get out and watch people, take a trip. All things that worked. But all running.
I'm tired of running. Just haven't yet discovered how to stand still with the pain. But I'm not afraid of the hard work and believe that eventually I'll get it figured out.
In the meantime, some music that seems to always at least ground me if not bring me back is "Beautiful" by Grady Soine. The man's music is all keyboard, all original, and seems to me to come from the heavens. You can google him to pick up a copy. I listen to it every morning. And have several other of his albums as well.
I can remember the exact moment in time when I realized that life was not fair ~ I came home from school crying about some injustice (what it was I can't remember) that had happened that day and my Dad sat me down and said, "who ever told you that life was going to be fair?". In my simple child life, I really did think that there was someone or something that was going to make the playing field even and all things equal and fair.
Then there was my Great-Grandfather who lived to be 100. He lived 2 houses away from us. Everytime I would talk to him and ask him how he was he would reply: "I'm still alive".
Whenever life gets coming at me too hard and too fast I think to myself "I'm still alive"
Great post, Krissie. A good book combined with great music usually helps me. I have a cache of cheer-up books by my very favorite authors and I save them for times I need them. Hugs for my dogs who don't know life isn't fair, and sitting outside and watching my backyard birds sing and flit about are good, too.
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