Maybe this goes back to my impatience with myself and my own problem-solving abilities that I discussed in my previous post about Skyrim, but I can't stand it when things are going wrong and I don't know how to fix them. I am perfectly willing to dive in and get my hands dirty once I know what needs to be done, but in that in-between time where things are just not quite right and there is no clear solution at hand, I am not a happy camper. I like there to be a nice, straight, freshly-swept road to Winningtown, not a dark, obstructed, brambly path through the woods that may just lead to Failure Valley.
Life, for the most part, seems to consist of dark, brambly paths with indeterminate ends.
I am quite often frustrated by this fact.
This frustration doesn't only surface when I'm dealing with some big-picture issue I'm facing. This morning I have already encountered about seven tiny things that aren't working. To give you a sense of how tiny I'm talking about, I found a quote last night in a book I'm reading on my Nook. (The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking) I wanted to share it on Facebook and/or Twitter, or maybe even use it as a blog post inspiration. My iPad is upstairs, and my toddler is waiting outside my office door to lure me into a never-ending game of "Itsy-Bitsy Spider," so I was hoping to be able to pull it up on my Nook for PC. Except, my Nook for PC is not syncing any of the books that I've downloaded in the past month, so it's just not there. I tried to go online and look at it in the browser, but that wasn't working either. So, tiny, tiny, tiny issues. The essence of first world problems. Really, shouldn't be impacting my quality of life.
Except, there are so dang many of them! Technology is such a huge part of my daily life. For better or worse, I am literally interacting with something with a screen for the vast majority of my waking moments nowadays. And when something on one of those screens doesn't work the way I want it to, it's like a little tiny pebble of frustration drops into my shoe. Add to that the other small frustrations - dropping a butter knife on my slipper. Add to that the bigger frustrations of daily life as a mom, business owner, wife, etc. Put it all together, and by 9am, I am already feeling so weary. I just want things to WORK.
There are so many things I can't fix, from computer issues to my kids to my husband to my clients. (Sorry guys.) So what am I to do? I'm a perpetually frustrated fixer.
In the aforementioned book I'm reading, which I'm only about 1/3 through, the author is talking about acceptance of the negative in life as a path to contentment. Very Zen Buddhist and all that. Intellectually this makes a lot of sense - that life is suffering and resistance causes pain - but I don't know how to reconcile that concept with my natural desire to set things right. Which things do I let go, and which do I work at? Obviously overcoming obstacles is an important part of progress. But I also know that not every obstacle needs to be overcome, and most of all, I don't have to chop through all of them with a rusty hatchet, as is my natural inclination.
Perhaps it's all a matter of recognizing the limits of my energy and then deciding which things are worth putting energy toward and which aren't (hint: dropped butter knives, not worth even one drop). Focusing primarily on those things that are worth fighting for: kindness and love come to mind. Letting the rest of the chips fall where they may. (That means talking myself down off the ledge when I drop my bowl of chips. EVEN THOUGH I REALLY LOVE CHIPS.)
I find myself back in a familiar spot, reminding myself that it all boils down to love and fear. When I don't know what to do next to "fix something" in my life, the choice that looks like love is always the right choice. Choices made from a place of fear never are. Sometimes the choice that looks like love is doing nothing, letting go. Sometimes it's taking action.
Perhaps I'm not as lost as I thought I was.
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