Better All The Time

Except for John Taylor, the Jaguar E-type, and Chocolat’s champagne truffle, nothing is completely perfect. It may seem so at the beginning, but in due course, flaws will become evident. Your shiny exotic sports car will start to misfire. Your dream home will develop a leaky roof. The new colleague you clicked with turns out to be bipolar. Mr. Right comes with two kids and a clingy ex-wife.

You get the picture.

The opposite is also inevitable. What sucks right now will improve. It doesn’t matter where you are in life, that big wheel keeps on turnin’ and everything associated with it is in its own present moment.

What am I trying to say here? Basically, that good stuff co-exists with bad stuff and vice versa. It’s a matter of—there’s that word again—perspective. You can find something positive in chaos and you can find something to kill your joy. It’s your call whether to seek gratitude or not, but it’s also a given that positive and negative happen at the same time. Life is never solely one or the other. It’s always both. What takes precedence is whatever gets your attention. Admittedly, some downers demand attention as part of our learning, but while we’re dealing with the human condition, we can take heart in knowing that everything around us is moving like a Ferris Wheel, some things rising to a pinnacle and others on the descent. Sure, the latter may be construed as depressing, but really, it’s not. It’s life—evolving and revolving.

Many years ago, my father quoted me a Chinese proverb (and I’m paraphrasing here): “Bad luck, like good, cannot last forever.”

And it doesn’t. Change is always happening. The trick is to enjoy the ride—and when it’s scary as hell and you want it to stop, gird your loins and trust that it will, because it will.

With love,