I’m fighting a dangerous mental habit.
With five kids and a small business I am constantly beset with errands that I urgently need to do RIGHT NOW and find myself desperately wishing huge chunks of my life away. “If I can just make it through this week.” or “Oh, God, I can’t wait for this birthday/vacation/ holiday to be over.” This is bad news, because, guess what? Someday I will get my wish and won’t that be a bummer? No more errands, no more chores, no more…nothing.
Which leads me to my new motto, read, ironically, on vacation while three quarters of my brain was obsessing about how busy I was going to be once I got home. The quote was “Embrace the suck.” I’m using it totally out of context here, (relating as it did to high intensity, sprint workouts.) But it’s perfect for my life. House a mess?– Embrace the suck. Pulled in a million different directions?– Embrace the suck. Long on kids and short on cash?– Embrace the suck.
The suck is all the messy bits of life…No! The suck IS life! (Wait a minute. That came out worse than I meant it to.) I only mean to say that life is not the happy – happy – joy – joy – “Isn’t this dandy?” bit of fun that we all would like it to be. I’m sure that even Paris Hilton is challenged by unpleasant moments. Like when, gosh, I don’t know, she wants to go dancing but her diamond tiara is still at the cleaners. Life is full of dreams deferred, unforeseen circumstances and plans gone awry…even if those plans are only for a nice, grilled rueben sandwich for lunch. Well, guess what? You only have tuna fish or peanut butter. So you can spend your lunchtime wishing for corned beef that never materializes or embrace the suck and enjoy your tuna fish sandwich, already. I’m not so good at that. I want a reuben, dammit.
I think the problem is that I like to feel in control of my life and the suck drives home the fact that I am not. I suppose that this is a good thing– in a “character building” sort of way. (and by that I mean “difficult” and “stupid”) I do believe that we are charged to grow and expand and become more than we have been. And if pressed, I will grudgingly admit that you don’t get to do that by having everything play out in a nice, neat, perfect manner. All kinds of things happen that just plain suck and if one were to be disgustingly chipper about it, these are the moments of true opportunity.
So I’ll work on it. It’s a good and noble thing to do and besides, life isn’t all suck. Sometimes it is perfectly lovely. Sometimes you are just minding your own business, thinking “Well, it’s tuna for lunch for me.” and-WHAM!- reuben sandwich. Those are good days. The days you get to put aside the suck and embrace the reuben.
Mmmmmm……rueben………
Yes I will embrace the suck.