You Can't Always Count On this Blog Being There For You

These last few weeks have been filled with a lot of ups and downs. I was working (doing trunk shows for the jewelry co. I've been working for) a lot, so that always makes me feel a little disconnected from my "normal" life. R's work has been crazy for him lately and the kids have been crazy as usual. We've had some sick loved ones and a loved one that was waiting to hear if they were sick - part of the "ups" is that they are not sick... phew. For whatever reason, when life gets crazy, I tend to say to myself, "Why must there be so much uncertainty?"

The answer, I suppose, is that life is full of uncertainty. As long as we are alive on this earth, we will be faced with challenges and changes - some good, some not so good. One thing we can bet on is that we can't know what is to come. I'm sure that those commuters in Minneapolis had no idea what was in store for them as they crossed that bridge over the Mississippi River - a bridge they had probably crossed countless times before. We carry on through our lives crossing bridges and relying on the people and things that have been there for us. The reality of life is that those things we count on can fail without notice.

So how can we live, day to day, without fear of the unknown? I am no master of adaptability, but I do believe that we should be continually striving to become better at adjusting to change. An important element of adjusting to change is maintaining your core strength - your soul's character. Everything around us can change, but our core strength can drive us to happiness. Happiness does not just happen, we "get" happiness. We find happiness in the details of our day, in the times of each season, in the memories of life. Even as we face sadness or fear our hope for better times can bring us happiness.

Getting happiness could also be explained as minimizing pain. Pain is unavoidably part of life. It is an essential part of life because without it, we wouldn't remember our mistakes. Too much pain, however can change us into people we weren't meant to be. It can cause us to react to life's challenges in unhealthy and unproductive ways. Pain can become the norm, and we forget what true happiness feels like.

When we experience pain, we can use that opportunity to make a change. Change of tactic, change of pace, change of perspective or change of heart.

Of course, these are all great ideas (or so I'd like to think) but how practical are they? I'll let you know when I've figured out how to use them.