I feel the need to post something positive and uplifting about my efforts today, especially in light of the fact that the Bank, in wisdom infinite, decided that my Mad Money account was overdrawn by $1 (yes, that does say one dollar) and saw fit to charge me not one, but two overdraft fees, thus rewarding my efforts to be charitable and begin living a Charmed Life á la Victoria Moran with a charming debit of $70.
Thank you, the Universe. I owe you one.
So here it is — not written by me, but found by me. Normally, I wouldn't steal it and repost it here, but I want to be able to reread it and cheer myself up at will, because I'm incredibly sad right now.
from Tales From Days on the Road, by Jaeme Haviland:
I could waste your time telling you all the things that are wrong, belabor you with the ills and woes that make life so miserable for me right now. I won't. All God's chillen got problems. Instead, I will share with you my new-found strategy for handling the stress of modern life. While I was surfing through some online journals and blogs recently, I picked up on a couple of recurrent themes. First, most everyone I know is struggling to make ends meet financially, have health problems or both. Second, they write about their problems a lot- mainly so they won't feel alone. A thread of depression and desperation runs through almost every personal page I come across.
Friends, you are not alone. Despite what Madison Avenue would have you believe, a large percentage of the population is in the grip of economic depression and it impacts those of marginal means the hardest. Evidently, I must only know people who belong to that group- the working poor, the elderly and the chronically ill. If so, then hitch up a chair, brothers and sisters, let's commiserate. I know what it's like being one of the invisible.
So if many of us are in the same jam, there's no need to feel like you have been singled out. We will all go down together. Once I realized this, my feelings of abandonment disappeared. We haven't been left behind; nobody is going anywhere. Sometimes, I think we continue to suffer from the psychological effects of 9/11. The collective soul of this country is still hurting, hating, blind with anger and like any victim of violent crime, we have become mired in a bipolar existence: unable to go back and unable to let go.
All of which is to say we find ourselves in a position that is less than optimal. We have to just tough it out. We can make ourselves miserable in the process of trying to survive or we can try to salvage what is left to us and enjoy those fleeting moments of tranquility that life offers. I'm not saying "don't worry, be happy". Only the naive or the innocent can benefit from that. What I am saying is in the midst of stressing over the bills and a myriad of other concerns, you may find yourself missing out. Live in the moment. That's what I'm trying to do. If I have done all I can do about any situation, then I have to let it go. Our life is made of days, our days built of hours. If in the next hour I have no immediate needs or wants, then I will relax and dismiss anything that doesn't relate to what I am doing right at that moment.
I was out in the front yard yesterday, having my coffee and cigar in the shade, when I had a flash of insight. I have never believed in destiny, or more specifically, predestination. To me, that meant fate was merely a rhetorical construct, a colloquial expression like "good luck". Luck does not exist and chance is neither good or bad. But fate does. Every second of our waking lives, we make choices. Those choices converge to form a stream of action. For every action, there is a result. The result spawns another reaction. This chain of events lead to a conclusion that might be called fate. But fate, unlike destiny, is changeable. If you change your reaction to a specific event, or even choose not to react at all, it causes a minute shift in the direction of your life. Even the smallest deflection may have momentous impact down the road. We can only hope we are making the right choices.
copyright © 2007 by Jaeme H. Haviland.