Monday 22 June 2015

DO OVER

There are times when we wish LIFE would give us a chance for a DO OVER. When we have experienced a rough couple of weeks, we would really like to maybe have missed some of it. Too bad we can’t just skip the bad parts. 

If not, too bad we can’t just get to the part where everything is either the way it was, or even just O.K. again. Sometimes we probably wish we could just go back and DO OVER the thing that we feel got us into the situation we are in now.

The movie Click with Adam Sandler tried to show how one person can try to meet all of his obligations and also to, by stopping life, move past times that each of us would prefer to have somehow avoided.

The last two weeks seemed to be a period for me that it would have been nice to be away from. The only really ridiculous part was the amount of food I spilled on my clothes, especially when eating while standing up at a wine (while actually Champagne) tasting. Not surprisingly, I think that Risotto, however good, is better to eat than to wear. 

Some things really were not much fun. You’ve been there too I am sure but possibly in a different way than I have been this time.

Two weeks ago Monday, I was going to visit a friend in hospital (actually Palliative care). I was ready to pick up a nice (not smelly) flowering plant and was just making a quick phone call to let the caregiver know I was on my way. To my shock and dismay, my friend throughout all of my adult years, had passed away the Saturday before, moments after his wife had left for home.

When you hear that someone has left us, you often experience disbelief that the world still seems to be going on around us as if nothing had happened. Sometimes this is as much of a shock as trying somehow to say goodbye to someone who played such an important part in our life.

In addition, though I really, really hate to admit it, and Stoical as I try to be about Cancer; once you’ve had it, you will always be looking over your shoulder…just in case it has come back.

It doesn’t matter whether you try always to only worry about something when there is something to worry about and not live your life worrying about things that haven’t even happened yet, but might. 

Suddenly you have an all consuming thing that has to be attended to...NOW. 
It’s almost as if any unusual thing can bring back the experience and sit it right in your face as if it had never been out of your life. 

The good thing is that you know where to go and who to ask and soon know that, as in my case, it was something completely different and soon dealt with.

Other things seem to pile on when you get this conjunction of trials and tribulations. If you’re not careful, you can build any Molehill into a Mountain.
However, life teaches us that there are times when we need to pause, take a breath and think. 

Our experiences teach us that, life is made up of many things. Some of these are easy, predictable and usually we glide by them as part of the routine we have built into our lives to take us through the relatively normal days. Thankfully there are a lot of those.

It’s when we get thrown out of our routine and have to consider what we need to do to deal with a set of new experiences, small and large, that having lived and learned comes in handy.

While each of us has some trying times, we also recognize that we are living and learning. That we have lived and learned is obvious when we know that whatever is happening now, we will move on to something else eventually.

Maybe the silver lining in this particular set of clouds is that my tear ducts finally may have unclogged and the ‘bags’ under my eyes will now get smaller. The strange thing I was worried about has again turned out to be nothing special and it is good I did not stay freaked out about it for long.

The passing of my friend, will stay with me in memory and in the knowledge that I had the gift of his integrity and wise counsel in my life to guide me throughout the years and will always have it in remembrance and gratitude.

Life maybe actually needs to be lived moving forward. Perhaps the DO OVER is something we outgrow as we find that we are able to take what we have learned before and more easily deal with the tougher weeks, until we are again ready to move forward again.

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