Having one of those days, darling? You know what I mean – one of those frustrating, exhausting days in which everything you had planned is blown out the window by the things you didn’t anticipate?
The kind of day when you needed only to focus for one good hour to complete an important project, but the phone rings, the computer crashes, or the one person you desperately need to consult has left on vacation? The kind of day in which the faster you go the farther behind you fall?
Any street-corner guru will tell you: what happens in your life is not important. Hate your job? Not important. Dumped by the love of your life? Sorry, not even close to important. Diagnosis: Cancer? To this I can personally and emphatically say, “Not important.”
That same street-corner guru (who happens, just like you, to be my brother) will tell you: What matters is the way you respond to what happens.
Look, my friend –I made it through radical surgery and nine months of chemotherapy by conducting little experiments just to amuse myself, and refusing to attend the pity party. You’d be surprised at how people react to a bald lady singing out, “Good Morning!” as she race-walks down the hospital hall at 6 a.m., grinning like the Cheshire Cat, morning after morning.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., one of my long-time favorite American authors, said, Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I, myself, prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.
So when the day is long, your schedule has been tossed and torn by the winds of change – when you think nothing could be worse than getting what you got, or not getting what you wanted – turn your mind around, and give yourself a good belly-laugh.
There’s less cleaning up to do.