Open Up Your Heart and Let the Sunshine In!

That song popped into my head today - I used to sing it when I was still a preschooler.  I was so excited when my dad bought the sheet music for it.  There was a picture on it of a chubby, adorable little girl - I was pretty sure it was me!

Well, fast forward about 55 years and here I am, suddenly, opening up and letting the sunshine in.  Smiling because "frown-ers never win!"  Last week I focused more on my food, leaving out much of the sugar, most of the grains and quite a bit of the sodium!  I gained half a pound!  But wait, frown-ers never win!  And there is the crux - when life dishes out unexpected hiccups to our well laid plans, the first thing I do (Do you?) is complain.  Why?  Why? Why?  Why, when I ate so much better?  Why, when I really, really wanted it?  Why, when I was trying so hard?  Well, why not?  After all, this is a many-pronged journey I am on!

Choices

In my "DAY" job I am often in a place of providing counsel or advice. It is a place I feel I fit - not because I have done it all right but because experience has provided me with a lot of "doing it not-right" situations.  You know - those times when you disappear from the journey on the right path and veer off on one that is full of  manholes - deep pits just waiting for you to fall into them.  It is a strange wisdom that comes from falling - one part embarrassment and one part illumination.

Since I am old, or so my grandson says, I have had my share of falls - in every stage from teenage angst and puppy love to adult choices like education, marriage and divorce.  I have to say the map is so obvious from this viewpoint!  But back there - in my twenty's and thirty's and forty's and fifty's - the trek was uphill, the curves were often hidden and the signs that said "Falling Hazard - Slow Down!" just didn't jump out at me until I was looking back over my shoulder.  By that time the embarrassment or pain or sheer terror had taken hold and the lesson needed to be learned.

Life is Serious - now BREATHE!

All too often I take life very seriously like it is mine to hold on to, to count and quarter, measure and maintain like some kind of special model ship or shiny crystal butterfly.  It is a fact that many of us feel that we can protect the essence by hiding it behind carefully constructed walls but in the end we smother the joy of really living. Breathing freely - exhaling as well as inhaling - is truly living.  Have you ever held your breath in nervous anticipation of something - good or bad - then exhaled in relief or acceptance?  I see this holding of my breath as an unconscious way to control something that is inevitable. You can, for a moment, control something but, in the end, life takes over and so you too must exhale.