Dancing in the Rain

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass.
Life is learning to dance in the rain!

I just love that quote. I saw it in the signature line of a friend's email recently, and I've adopted it for my own personal motto. I got a taste of what it really means last week, when I finally got my taxes done and found out I owe a fortune to the IRS. I don't have it. I trust that I'll get it, but it's such a big chunk I'm not sure what I'm supposed to live on while I'm paying it off.

Now this is the first really not so great thing that's happened to me in a while. (Well, aside from that minor snafu when I pulled a butt muscle, but that was merely a blip.) Life's been so so very good to me lately. I've been happy, healthy, productive, strong, upbeat, busy, and having fun every day in one way or another. In fact, I've been so happy, that the news from my accountant didn't cause much of a ripple. Three months ago, I'd have probably been devastated. I'd have burst into tears, moaned, complained, worried. I'd have gone into a funk for at least a few weeks, as I stressed and worried how to pay it off, what to do, how to deal, why it's so unfair, and all the usual whiny-ass nonsense. In fact, my accountant was surprised by my lack of a reaction and asked me why I wasn't weeping on his desk. And that made me search my mind and my heart, as I wondered too. But the answer was pretty easy.

It is what it is, I told him. I can cry and complain, or I can shrug and continue being happy. It's not going to change what I owe. And I really prefer being happy. Besides, in a positive frame of mind, one attracts more positive things, and negativity only brings on more negativity, so if I really want to pay this off, staying positive is going to be far more beneficial in the long run.

Okay, I hear you naysayers out there grumbling. If you're so damn positive and upbeat and sickeningly Sunnybrook Farmish, then how did you "attract" this kind of debt in the first place, smarty-pants? Well, I'll tell you how. I've been happy, yeah, but we all have stuff we can work on, and one of mine has been my attitude about money. Always has been. I don't like it. I enjoy having it, but I resent it at the same time. I never feel wealthy, I feel poor and as if the wealthy me is just a facade. I also feel that I get taken advantage of and used for money quite often, and that eats away at me, which is just silly. No one can use you or take advantage if you don't let them, right? So anyway, my attitude about money has been bad, my approach to managing finances is to ignore them completely, and my desire, the one I've been putting out to the Universe, is to get better about these things.

So of course, the manifestation I created for myself was built out of those things. The negative attitude about money brought me a big fat negative money issue, and my desire to get better at managing it brought me a situation in which I have no other choice but to get better at managing it. See how that works?

It makes perfect sense to me. Dealing with this issue is going to make me feel empowered about money matters. Facing it in the first place, is going to make me ensure that I don't have to face it again by learning to manage things in a more practical way. Everything about my financial life is improving because of this situation, and when I'm on the other side of it, I'll be in a far better place.

So yeah, it's a tiny bit of a storm. Just like the other day, when my daughter Stacie and I wanted to go for a nice long walk, but it was raining. At first, we waited for the storm to pass. It didn't, but it did let up a bit, so we decided to risk it. We walked about two and a half miles, then turned to come back, and that's when it started to sprinkle. And then it sprinkled more, and then it opened up and poured. And we started to laugh as we got soaked through and through. We kept on walking, and we jumped into the big puddles and splashed water all over each other, like little kids. We opened our arms and spun in circles and let the rain fall on our faces. And we had a great time. It sure was better than it would have been to sit around the house moping over the storm and waiting for it to pass.

Just because a storm comes along, that's no reason to stop having fun!

I know though that some storms are a lot worse than others. We can't control the conditions around us. Only the way we react to them. But that's big. That's really everything when it comes down to it. The things that give you joy are still there, even when other things, big nasty things, sometimes, come along to distract you from them. But don't ignore them, or they'll fade away. Nurture the good stuff, let it be the stuff that distracts you from the rest. Bad stuff will come and bad stuff will go. But it can't force you to be unhappy unless you allow it!

So dance in the rain. Be happy anyway. Thumb your nose at the bad stuff, and turn your attention right back to the good, even if the only good you can find at the moment is jumping in a mud puddle. Dance in the rain and know that everything really is just fine. All is well. It truly is.

Maggie