If you can start the day without caffeine or pep pills; if you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains; if you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles; if you can eat the same food everyday and be grateful for it; if you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you time; if you can overlook when people take things out on you when, through no fault of yours, something goes wrong; if you can take criticism and blame without resentment; if you can face the world without lies and deceit; if you can relax without liquor and sleep without the aid of drugs; if you can do all these things, then you are probably the family dog.
-- Author Unknown

Sometimes life deals us some rough circumstances and throws us into places that are hurtful, uncomfortable, or just plain dumb. It’s hard to stay up and open all the time. One day you’re sitting in an easy chair on easy street and everything’s going your way; the very next day, your chair has been overturned, the street has formed switchbacks, and you can’t even find your way. That’s life.

To stay focused on the beauty and magnificence of life’s journey when things are bleak and wearisome isn’t easy; it takes a tough and resilient constitution and strong, unrelenting faith that this too shall pass and just on the other side of any mess is you the victor, the conqueror.

You could spend your life as a pessimist, doubting good things will happen and refuting that the good stuff that does happen was meant to be, not just chance or a fluke. But then you run the risk of missing out on certainties and opportunities that only come to fruition because you believed in them. Or you can spend your life as an eternal optimist who believes that every slam turns into a big juicy steak and just saying it’s all good actually makes it all good. But that’d be naïve and you’d probably feel foolish more times than not.

Or perhaps it’s healthiest to find a balance, a happy medium, between the two extremes. Perhaps living in the middle of cynicism and cheerfulness allows room to exercise your humanness and gives you permission to experience all the emotions along the spectrum of attitudes, going with the day’s feeling and flow whatever they are. Perhaps as humans we aren’t designed or intended to function in just one place, that what we deal with each day should cause us to move as a Ferris Wheel does so that we not only appreciate the ups, but we can catch another wind and pray and prepare for our ups when we’re down.

That’s what life is about – taking it all in stride, never to personally, never too casually, but simply accepting and emotionally accommodating it without too much worry or strife. Stuff happens to us all. The trick is to steady your outlook and lie comfortably, humbly, and patiently somewhere along the middle of the edges, shaking it all off your back – just like the family dog.

Sadiqqa © 2007