It’s always something. It it’s not one thing, it’s another. If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all. We have all heard these statements. Perhaps we have even said them ourselves. The irony is that these statements are true. No matter how well planned our day, our event, or our vacation; something will occur to challenge it. The appliance, or our car, breaks down. We come down with a cold or have a fender bender. The zipper on our favorite pair of jeans pulls apart. The cat throws up on our just laundered bedding or the dog has an “accident” in the house. We drop and break our favorite cup or our girlfriend breaks up with us. Our marriage, or something less significant, disappoints us. We get the cancer diagnosis. The hailstorm decimates the garden we had spent weeks growing. The new shoes we ordered are the wrong size. We burned a perfect dinner. Someone rains on our parade or bursts our balloon; but life goes on and we cope.
The problems that occur on a daily basis are only problems if we choose to make them so. Sure, they are inconvenient. We can lament and complain, which only creates more of the same. Or, we can laugh, say oh well, and let it go. We cannot, in most circumstances, let the situation go entirely. Often, we must find solutions, remedy situations, and take action; but we must let the annoyance, the resistance, the anger, and all of the negative emotions pass over us. Giving away our power to those somethings, by dwelling on them, suppresses our inner joy. It keeps us captive in a prison of our own making. We are the only one who can free us from the misery created by our own thinking. When we free ourselves from the gravity of our miss-guided perceptions, the little inconveniences are resolved quickly and easily. The bigger challenges may take more time, but if we keep our eye on the rainbow and not on the rain, all things are sorted out in the end. In the end, the misfortune often turns out to be a blessing.
