Overcoming All

I saw the above quote this morning while attempting to find inspiration to handle my current challenge in life with aplomb. I have to admit, I haven't been big with the graceful handling of life lately. I get angry because I feel like everything is a personal attack on my life and my character instead of seeing it as an opportunity to grow, handle the moment with calm dignity, and remember that I have a choice how I view it and deal with it.

Whenever something big has gone down in my life, I've been asked "How do you get through it? How are you handling this so well?" I never understand that question, because, well, how else am I supposed to handle it? However, when the little stuff hits, watch out world. I'm going to handle it like a two year-old. Throw a fit, cry, rage, wish it would go away, despair that it will ever get better, and basically hope someone else would handle all of life's challenges for me. It's almost as if the big things are easier to handle because the answers are so much more obvious. It's not like curling up into a little ball and just letting the world go on around me was ever an option for me. I'm WAY too stubborn for that. When little challenges hit, there are so many possibilities of how to handle it, and none of them really within my grasp 99% of the time, that I feel like my head is spinning. I feel like it will spin right off the screw that keeps it on my shoulders and roll away, just like in that Shel Silverstein poem.

"Mama said I'd lose my head

If it wasn't fastened on.

Today I guess it wasn't

Cause while playing with my cousin

It fell off and rolled away

And now it's gone.

And I can't look for it

Cause my eyes are in it,

And I can't call to it

Cause my mouth is on it

(couldn't hear me anyway

Cause my ears are on it),

Can't even think about it

Cause my brain is in it.

So I guess I'll sit down

On this rock

And rest for just a minute..."

So, someday, when you see me sitting on my head at the park, know it's because I finally lost my head. I forgot in all of life's everyday little challenges that I have a choice how to handle the situation. Just stand me up, put my head back where it belongs, and show me this blog. Remind me that it's okay to lose it for a minute or two, it's okay to cry and get upset, it's okay to not know what to do, but it's never okay to give up and just stop trying to figure it out. Partly because I'm a grown up and that's the way things are, partly because the world won't stop spinning just because I wish it would, but mostly because I'm better than that and far too stubborn to forgive myself if I were to one day just sit on a "rock" and stop trying to take care of myself.