The Wild Card

Much of our psychological stress comes from worrying about the unknown.  Occasionally, it is important to give yourself permission to allow room for the wild card, the unknown, the chance that good things might happen for no reason at all, that things will work out. This would mean that you don’t have to be the general manager of the universe. You don’t have to fix everything. It is easy to imagine all the negative things that can happen, but remember, things could also turn out just fine. Give equal time to imagining that, too. Every now and then, it’s OK to just rest and give some situations time to untangle themselves.

One You

You only get one You. While I like to compare my body to a garden, a car, or a well-oiled machine, it’s not. The difference is, if I don’t take care of my car, I can get another one. If I let my garden go to weeds or find out that the soil is all rocks and salt- I can go and garden somewhere else. But my body? This is all I get.  It’s more like having one car all your life; only one garden in one place- and the climate that comes with it. There are no new car lots at which to cash in or trade up, no farmer’s market to substitute for the tilling and planting you have to do yourself. That’s the body. 

The View

I went in to work facing mountains of paper and lists of things to do. It was an avalanche waiting to crush me. I sat in a chair, staring straight ahead. I started to work on a small piece of it. It felt like trimming the toenail of a giant I could not conquer. 

I went home to another range of mountains. This time, many were posing as harmless crops and fields to be cultivated for the proverbial greater good or a seemingly worthy cause.  But, I thought, All of this is killing me, slowly, deliberately, one stressful toxin at a time. I could feel myself suffocating, sweating; headache and exhaustion from the thought of it; fear of a new mountain pushing its head up through a volcanic floor. I needed to move away from the mountains, or move the mountains away from me, or close the admissions window to all new mountain-creating customers.