Adulting Lessons

1) Don't do stupid stuff.

2) Own the stuff you do, even if it is stupid.

3) After doing stupid stuff and initially failing to own it, go back and make amends for stupid stuff done (which includes not just the original stupidity, but the failed ownership which is stupid too).

4) Repeat as needed.

Venting and outrage are easy enough, but rarely are they productive exercises. I wonder at the things that set my outrage meter awhir. I am trying to tamp down the outrage that wells up as a way, seemingly, to inoculate the ones I love against accidents and tragedy. You know, the outrage that attacks mothers who lose toddlers in gorilla enclosures and reptile infested waters. I try to remind myself that even the most diligent parents encounter a hot mess, an accident from time to time.

Perhaps I need to wonder more at the things that fail to set off my outrage. How do I better light a fire under my inaction when I am slumped? How can I learn to combat despair at coming up empty in the face of someone else's need? I am very bad at walking a good balance between self care and self flagellation. I need to more finely tune the meter inside my head that measures the difference between I can't even and I really don't want to. Because without that meter, I fall deeply into the land of should--I should have been able. I should have been more prepared. I should have been more receptive to promptings.

A long time ago, I had an epiphany of sorts while watching Oprah. It was one of those shows that seemed to promise answers, even though the answers weren't really the ones they advertised. The show was peopled with seemingly overtaxed women; women who could not even. But niggling in the back of my mind, pricking at my spirit was the thought: but they must at least watch Oprah, otherwise they would not be appearing on this show. And the epiphany that came to me was this: everyone takes down time. Whether we have it available or we truly can't even, we take it, because otherwise we collapse (and I suppose collapse is our body's way of forcing the down time, if we let it get that far), either physically, mentally or emotionally. The trick is to make my down time restorative. Oprah never was restorative for me. Service can often be restorative, if counter intuitive--the giving when we are lacking. But sometimes even service becomes akin to nursing an infant our life blood because we have no more milk.

I need to own the outrage meter inside me, the one that says you could have done more. 'If you had followed promptings, you could have helped, you could have been able to help.'

So, I have been lazy lately, it has cost me and those I love opportunities to feel love, care and growth. I am trying to make amends. This is the beginning, owning my stupid stuff.