c.
2018 Cheryl Kelly
All
rights reserved
(9-18)
Life
can be unbelievably cruel. It will give you the most incredible
highs one moment and then in the blink of an eye, turn around and
pull the rug right out from underneath your feet leaving you with the
most bitter pain and suffering. Suffering that makes you actually
contemplate if death wouldn’t be more bearable. It can give you
triumphs that raise you to the highest elevations one day, and the
next bring you crashing down into emotional devastation all the while
leaving you wondering what just happened. It is this very
uncertainty that makes life a challenge...that makes life worth
figuring out how to navigate the ups and downs; how to take those
highs and learn how to reign them in and capitalize on them and take
those lows and learn from them to make them worth all the pain
involved.
There
are all kinds of advice out there meant to help you try to reason
through life’s ups and downs… “when one door closes, another
opens”… “things happen for a reason”… “you can’t grasp
new things if your hands are full of yesterday’s baggage”. The
point being that in life, nothing is certain, and just when you think
you have it figured out, the rules change, and you are thrust right
back to where you started, or worse, back even further. It never
fails, the minute you think you have a handle on things, life reminds
you just how naive you truly are as a human being...as if to pat you
on the head and say, “silly human, don’t you know by now I’m in
control?”. The tough part is learning the art of acceptance.
Acceptance of the fact that you aren’t in control, and never will
be. But, don’t despair!
You
might be thinking, if you cannot control the things in your life,
then how do you function, how do you survive, and succeed? I like to
equate it to business. It’s all in your management skills.
Learning to prioritize, delegate and, at times, when to walk away
from a deal or partnership that isn’t efficient or effective. I
know, easier said than done, but, if you can take something as
complicated as life and break it down a bit, sometimes, you can find
a new perspective.
Take
relationships for example. You cannot control other people, and you
surely cannot control emotions and feelings – they are what they
are...but, you can try to manage your responses and your actions.
What is difficult is recognizing where to focus your attention, when
to know you need help, when to see that things are not moving in the
right direction for you or the outcome is clearly not going to be in
your best interest, and lastly, when to accept that it’s time to
throw in the proverbial towel and move on. No one likes to fail, but
at times, failing is inevitable. Especially when you come to the
realization that you have nothing left to give, no more strategies
left to try.
You
can’t always get what you want, and that’s a reality that’s
hard to accept at times. That lack of control breeds a feeling of
complete chaos and it can be brutal. As a control freak myself, I
can say, I’ve been there and it ain’t fun… It can easily send
you spiraling down the path of no progress, or worse, down the
completely wrong path, and before you know it, you have wasted years
trying to make something work that you should have abandoned a long
time ago. And those years, you can’t get back. Life,
unfortunately, does not give many do-overs.
In
the end, life dictates your successes and your failures. Some of
those outcomes you can control, and others you can’t. Life would
be easy if we knew those outcomes ahead of time so we could direct
our actions accordingly, but what fun would that be? All you can
hope for is that you can look back one day, sleep soundly at night
knowing that your efforts were not wasted. That you made the right
decisions for yourself at the right moments, and if you didn’t, you
learned from that and you moved forward without regret. I know, it’s
a tall order…
Editor’s
Note: I like your analogy to business negotiations. As a Libertarian,
I have sometimes observed that marriage (or any committed
relationship) is basically a business partnership agreed upon
by consenting adults. Adding religious or romantic overtones
certainly gives it extra glamour, but in real terms, it is a deal
between willing parties. As you observe, those can sometimes go bad,
or prove to be unproductive. I once had an older friend who said he
looked at a potential mate not only in terms of love but also by
comparing assets in the relationship. (Personality,
life managing skills, etc.) I used to think that was harsh, but
reading your column makes me think you have grasped
this concept where I failed to learn quickly. Cheers to you, my
friend!
