Friday, March 11, 2011

3's

They say that bad things always happen in 3’s. But what do you do if they happen in 5’s or 7’s?

I’ve gone through a few periods in my life where it seems like someone is firing off a round of bullets, well maybe more like water balloons, one after the other and I don’t get a chance to recover, readjust or poise and protect for the next hit. Never anything truly major or debilitating, but it’s the frequency that gets you, not necessarily the impact of each individual hit.

So I was recently crying to Kevin saying, “I just need a break - just a few months or maybe a year where nothing major goes wrong with my body, my family or at my job.” And almost as soon as I said it out loud, I realized how absurd it sounded.

Life is full of bad days; physical, emotional and mental hurdles; illness and death; divorces and break-ups; disappointment and hurt. You can’t go through life waiting for it to get easier, waiting for a break because you’ll be waiting an awful long time. But life doesn’t have to be about the things that almost break you. It can be about the things that keep you together, the lovers and friends and laughter and music in your life. It can be about the moments of pure unabashed love you share with your better half, laughing until your stomach hurts, the places you travel and people you meet, the lessons that teach you to love yourself, your life.

Life is hard; shitty things happen - regardless of your good intentions, benevolent actions or positive attitude. You simply can’t expect effortless smooth sailing in any stage of your life. After childhood, your chances at that kind of life are shot. You have no choice but to accept that it’s not supposed to be easy; you have no choice but to love it for the rays of sunshine you catch when you’re sitting on the grass in the outfield, in between swinging at curve balls. The sooner you do that, the better things get.