everything has its plan

Sunday night and instead of relaxing and doing the crossword puzzle like I had hoped, I'm reading frantically before orchestra about "Landscape and Memory," hoping that I get out early so that I can get ready for this massively big week I've got. My only respite, hopefully, will be a yoga class on Wednesday night.

As I was driving home today, I nearly got rear-ended. And the funny thing is, I sat there and braced myself for this woman in a huge SUV with a zebra striped steering wheel to hit me from behind. I watched in my rearview mirror as she stopped, millimeters from my bumper. Why, I wondered, didn't I move away?

Sometimes, I think, we're all such masochists that we can't move away from things, even though we know we are too close for comfort and that we will get hurt. You wait for it. You brace yourself for the moment when it will hit and something new will happen. It's usually not a good idea, and you know it, going in, but you do it anyway. Because it's exciting and thrilling and maybe even a little bit scary.

And what about the moments when you get so close and then, voila, something good happens? But instead of savoring it, you run. You run like hell. You get scared and need to get out. You start hyperventilating, you become a person you never thought you'd be and you run.

Maybe, instead of running, we need to take those tiny steps. Tiny steps towards healing ourselves and move on with whatever we were running from. Use the memories that have soured us against life and make them work in our favor. I'd like to think that there are moments when we change and subsequently, things around us change - in our favor. All because of one small, encouraging step in the right direction.

Quote o' the day:

"To the dull mind nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light." Ralph Waldo Emerson