The Obstacle is the path

Yesterday I was talking with one of my work colleagues, who is in the messy process of separating from her partner of seven years. She's sad, bitter and angry. As one would be I suppose.

She described it to me as 'having wasted seven years with someone who now thinks so little of me they want to rob me of everything I have'. That would be hard. Though I have nothing to compare her feelings to.

But what she said to me stuck with me. The thing about time being wasted.

I saw myself in all those times when I felt the same way about something. Anger and bitterness about things not having gone my way. Sadness about love unrequited. Grief about the loss of someone cherished. Fear about how I would go on...

But then I remembered something I read recently. The obstacle is the path.

We expect that life will always work out. It's unfair if things don't happen as we want them to. And people are bad if they don't like us.

But hang on! Life doesn't owe us a thing! No. It is not supposed to be fair. Why do we think it should? We've grown up, but we still believe that if we are good all year, Santa (i.e. Life) will give us a present for Christmas. Life isn't weighing up our good deeds and our bad deeds and handing out the next hand accordingly. Life doesn't care.

Let's grow up. And act like grown ups. The fairytale is over.

And what does acting like a grown up mean? It means taking each hand as it is dealt and making the most of it. Good hand? We say, awesome. Bad hand? We should be asking ourselves, how do I make this a good hand?

NOW may suck. But NOW doesn't last forever. And you need NOW. Sometimes you even need NOW to be crappy so you can find out how you deal with 'crappy'. You need it to find out what you're  really made of.

Life just is, y'know. Some times you can handle what it gives you, and other times, you'll find yourself drowning in sorrow.

Get up, get over yourself, and make that obstacle part of your path.