MAKING THE MOST OF WHAT LIFE HANDS YOU–WHEREVER YOU ARE

You are responsible for your life. You can’t keep blaming somebody else for your dysfunction. Life is really about moving on. Oprah Winfrey

Easy to say, right? But maybe not that easy to accomplish. As a whole it sounds great and overwhelming at the same time. It’s so much easier to blame everyone else for what’s not working in your life. But, then nothing will ever change. Everything changes–life is about change…all of life.

Possibly think about it like this, as Ursula LeGuin says, “The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.” Consider this wisdom from Gail Godwin… ”some things…arrive in their own mysterious hour, on their own terms and not yours, to be seized or relinquished forever.”

WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?

You don’t want to necessarily change just for the sake of doing so or because you think it will somehow make you happier. Blooming is about perhaps choosing not to change to stay where you are and bloom right there.

Imagine the tulip bulb in the ground, a few inches down resting all winter as the rains, snows, ice storms come and go, as the ground becomes harder than granite. As the weather gets warmer, mother earth begins to thaw and like a miracle little sprouts of green begin to pop up–sometimes even right out of the snow. From that dormant bulb comes a beautiful colorful flower. Change!

Even if you live in a warmer climate, subtle changes are happening all the time. The orange trees are bare and then filled with fruit. Some cacti are green and brown and then resplendent in a riot of colorful flowers. Imagine…you have another choice – enjoy the flowers, plants and trees in your yard or pick those flowers and create a bouquet for the evening, eat the fruit from the tree and luxuriate in the tongue titillating tastes, or…you decide.

Change may really be the only constant in life. All life. It’s a wonder why you fight change so strongly, why you fear it almost more than death. What’s on the other side of that hill could be better than what you have now. Do humans always think the worst? Do you? What if we considered what else is possible in a good way? What more is possible?

All of life may not be literally about moving on but I believe it’s about change and also about blooming where you are planted. It’s about being able to sprout those flowers when you feel all dried up, used up, exhausted beyond measure. It’s about blooming right where you are, making the best of what you have been handed, where you have landed. What if this isn’t all there is? What if more, better, best is possible? What if?...