Tiny bit

So, did I tell you how much I hate getting up at 6 AM?  Thought so.  Yesterday, Dan made it a little easier by bringing me coffee in bed.  I took a few sips, drifted back to sleep, took a few more.  Sat the cup on my chest just below my collar bone, resting my chin on it.  Drifted back to sleep.  Dumped it right down my front.  WOKE UP.  Never claimed to be a rocket scientist.  I didn't tell yesterday because I was still kinda greened, ( my dad's word for embarrassed).  Took me a minute.

Some things are bad enough to pin you right to the wall - like one of those insects on display at the museum.  Or pouring hot coffee down yourself at 6AM.  Actually, if you've lived longer than a few years, you know -many, many things are way worse than hot coffee beneath the collar bone. Nobody escapes bad moments.  All the positive thinking in the world won't negate the facts and your pain in reaction to them.  Cognitive behavioral perspectives and healthy self talk and relaxation breathing and exercise all help a tiny bit.  But sometimes we're just pierced through and have no choice but to just be there until the pain passes.  Which it will, one way or the other.

My grandmother said "A burnt child dreads a fire".  Since we've all been burnt a time or two in some manner, and will be again if we live, we can easily take up all the room in our lives if we spend now in dread of the next bad moment.  Even if it is human nature, we need to do our best to fight the instinct.  Breathe through the bad parts, talk back to the "what if, if only, how could" borrowing trouble parts.  If it's bad enough, we don't need to make it worse with foolish interpretations and generalizations.  We need to be still.  Let it be. Laugh at ourselves and remind ourselves we can handle it.  Do the next right thing, then keep on.  It passes.  Always much too slowly, but suffering passes.  Reality doesn't change but our reactions of terror, grief, rage, revulsion to it do diminish.  And there's still some blue heron somewhere lifting off a pond as we drive past it, whether we see it or not.  Notice it gracefully floating there before it takes off.  It doesn't negate the bad, it sits beside it, still beautiful anyway.  Wishing you sweet moments, even in the midst of the bad ones so they help a tiny bit.  Sometimes that's all we get for a while and it really is all we need.  XOXO