These days, I often feel like I am living in a reality TV show that I didn’t agree to be in, and just like reality TV, drama is artificially infused just to see how I will react. The more I try to ignore it, the louder it gets. The way things were, and the way I interacted with the world around me has profoundly changed and I feel as if I’m just along for the ride (make that Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride).
I remember a game I played as a child with my cousins. Someone would stand in the middle of a circle with a blanket over their body and those around them would spin them in a circle and then we would pull the blanket off and laugh as they tried to regain their balance and walk a straight line.
It was hard to find your way back to center again.
Back then in the safety of my grandmother’s yard, with everything familiar to me within a few steps, I could recalibrate very quickly.
Today as I watch everything I have ever known to be true, changing at lightning speed, I actively seek healthy ways to process new information and to find the comfort of my center. I do this because I know for a fact how fear, stress, anxiety can take its toll on our health.
I’ve had to re-calibrate my definitions of success, happiness, friendship and trust. I’ve also had to establish new boundaries. I am very choosy how I spend my time, and who I spend it with.
If someone isn’t a fit for me anymore, I quietly bless them out of my life. I thank them for teaching me a lesson and move on.
Everything that has happened, and is happening in the world right now has been guiding me to go inward, to focus on what is real and to leave everything else behind. It has made me slow down, live in the moment and place value on real things.
When you cut out the noise around you, you are better able to discern what makes you happy, what brings you joy. Joy can come out of chaos.
It frustrates my friends when I don’t immediately respond to a phone call or text – that’s because my phone is off most of the day. You’ll find me in the garden, or in my camper painting or sewing. I may be taking a nap, or I may be handwriting a letter out on my patio.
I may be reading a book or eating lunch on the fine china I bought at a thrift store (complete with crystal glasses and cloth napkins).
Every morning before I get out of bed, I imagine myself in a pink bubble of protection and love (just like bubble Glenda the good witch put Dorothy in to get her back home). I release the need to control or influence anyone, knowing that we’re all on our own journey (admittedly, that one has been the most challenging for me).
I sing to my plants and pets and I dance around my house in a pretty apron that I made myself.
When I’m sad, I let the tears flow without trying to stop them. I take a bath and visualize all my problems dissolving in the water, and then disappearing down the drain. As Scarlett so profoundly declared, “tomorrow is another day”.