It's amazing how those little bumps in the road can really mess you up. Luckily, for me, the most recent one was just a 24 hour stomach flu (other than the post run-over feeling, I'm much better...Monday was rough, though!). But of course, that 24 hours turned into recovery time and then forced a couple of cancellations of things I really wanted to do. Nothing big nor difficult to reschedule or postpone; easily taken care of, but bumps nonetheless and a little disappointing.
Couple that with reading about the economy and I started thinking of how often I let little bumps in the road majorly derail me. Isaac and I have built up a pretty simple life by design. We saved and budgeted all while in San Diego to have a nice reserve to live on should business not pick up this first year. Luckily, we haven't really touched it. We're very grateful for that. However, as the economy worsens, we are looking around to shore up our safeguards to help us weather the storm. Our food supply - good, but definitely needs to be better. I'm working on it. Savings - good, can get us through several months of no income, should that happen. Debt? None except the house (which is something that we purposely chose small and well within budget). Insurance - of every kind. Check. Living in a diverse place - got it. All of this has made it so I am mostly calm. Which, for me, is unusual in any sort of potential crisis. I'm taking that as a good sign; that we'll make it through somehow.
However, I wonder why I'm not as good for any sort of personal / emotional / spiritual bump in the road. Is it simply that I don't have that tangible checklist for those bumps? Or do I and I'm better at ignoring them? Why are these bumps the ones that get me so off balance I'm flailing about, trying to find footing? Sometimes I wish bumps were all physical or tangible - it might make them easier to deal with.
I don't think I've had a lot of trials in life. Sure, I had my divorce, but I just dealt and have never really thought of that as a trial. Isaac and I have worked hard and tried to do our part in smart decision making to minimize physical / hardship trials. We know they can still come, but we are trying to engineer our life to weather them the best we can. I need to learn from that aspect of life and shore up my emotional life a little better. I just wish it were easier.
2 clever comments:
Sorry you were sick! That's so miserable.
I think I know what you mean about letting things upset you. There have been times in my life when nothing ever went right, and I just became apathetic. I decided it'd be easier to not expect anything and be pleasantly surprised when good things happened, rather than constantly disappointed when they didn't. Probably not the healthiest way to approach it. But it's how I coped!
I think it's just easier to think in specific terms for preparing for temporal bumps in the road: save money, don't get into debt, have food storage, blah, blah, blah. Like you said, these are easy checklist items. But emotionally and spiritually, what would those be? Have a healthy self-esteem? A strong testimony? These aren't things you can just check off because they are so complex and have so many different components to them.
I think I do that Susan thing too--keep my expectations low so I'm not too upset when things don't go the way I'd planned. I'm not so sure I'm making the most of every day that way, though. It doesn't exactly seem the path to true happiness. I think instead I need to learn to be grateful for every little thing. There is always something good, even if it's just that I'm still alive.
Great post.
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