Sunday Thought - January 12, 2014: Mirror, Mirror

Life is all about how you handle Plan B.

-- Anonymous

When you look in the mirror every morning, who do you see?  Are you happy with what stares back at you?  Are the lights on, but nobody's home?  Maybe you really aren't the sharpest tool in the shed?  Are you looking at someone whose life is a toilet, ready to be flushed?  Well, flush it then!  Contrary to all of those "power of positive thinking" gurus, I think that, for some, life might require an occasional flush.  Let's face it, when the pooh gets so deep you're on your tiptoes trying to put off going under, maybe pressing the handle down makes a bit of sense.

 

There's a lot to be said for, "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence."  Many times we think this, and it really isn't.  As a matter of fact it oft times is the same, or worse.  But when your lips are about to take their first sip of "how low can you go," maybe it is time to bail.  Hey, life is a crap shoot and when you feel you have nothing left, there is usually no direction but up.  Does this mean change is going to be easy?  No.  Change might mean moving, a cut in pay, leaving your current main squeeze in hopes of finding someone just as good or better, and maybe downsizing your living space, your car, and your life.  If you aren't willing to do any, or all of this, then you have no idea what life is really all about and maybe you really are a bag of hammers.

"Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself."

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Life is all about change, adventure, and asking, "Why?"  Why am I in this dead end job?  Why am I with this loser?  Why am I lost in this big, damned, city?  Why am I making good money and I'm still not happy?  Why do I feel like there is no path to my life?  Why do I feel like I'm constantly fighting battles I just can't win?  Why?

There occasionally comes a time in battle when one has to perform a cost/benefit analysis.  The cost outweighs the benefit when one realizes the outcome is not obtainable.  There is no shame in admitting defeat.  The shame is in throwing loyalty on a bon fire you cannot hope to extinguish.  The shame is looking upon your soldiers as fodder.  Better to beat a hasty retreat and live to fight another day, before there is nothing left to fight with.  So it is with life.

 

If you're asking "why," then you're probably ready for a path out.  The next step is to - take a step!  You have to be willing to give it all up.  You have to be willing to say enough is enough.  You have to come to grips with the fact that money can't buy happiness. Is it really worth all the crap you're drowning in?  Once you take that first step, guess what?  You are on a path!  You are on your path!  It belongs to you, good or bad, right or wrong.  If someone tells you that you've made a mistake by taking this path (and they always do), you can look them square in the eye and tell them, at least you had the brass to try.  If it turns out to be a mistake -- it is your mistake, not theirs, and you're going to own it, wear it, and learn from it.  That is life!

 

You fool,

You have been dangling

For such a long time!

When will you seize the opportunity

Or feel the necessity

To untangle the taut knot

Of your bondage life?

-- Sri Chinmoy, "Ten Thousand Flower-Flames"

It is amazing how much of our lives we spend diligently working ourselves into debt and misery simply because we buy into the societal correctness of it all.  "Keeping up with the Joneses" has finally morphed into a religion in which we feel an obligation to tithe unto death.  We aren't being held down by an anchor; we have become the anchor!  We are drowning ourselves daily for fear of being labeled a loser, or a quitter; in whose eyes?  When you look in that mirror what do you see?  Do you see what you could be, or do you see what society has convinced you to be?  Why?

 

Mirror, mirror, why?

 

The question screams for an answer.

"Everything that occurs in your life is part of God's plan to wake you up."

-- Leonard Jacobson, spiritual teacher, mystic and healer