"Every promise don't turn out that way."
Beyoncé
A follow up to the last post, but written in a less happy moment...
Some call it Lemonade. It’s the advice of what to do when life gives you the proverbial lemons (sour experiences). I used to answer, “Make lemonade and sell it for a profit!”
Here recently, I’ve run into a series of losses that have affected me greatly. Oh to have the tenacity of Wile E. Coyote! Typically I take each failure and use the lessons to envision a different way of achieving the same desired outcome. Just as artists have taken broken pieces of tile to create beautiful mosaics, my “Well, it could be this…” thought process would give me solace that all is not lost. On the other hand, what do you do when you’ve constructed a beautiful sandcastle of an ideal outcome, but life brings a big wave to wash it all away?
My habit has been to go back to the drawing board and build another one. What else is there to do? Envisioning makes me happy. Even though I know I should not be tethered to that masterpiece, it sure does hurt when the chances of it coming to pass are washed away. The manufacturing process of taking life’s inputs and creating an optimal output can be taxing. It feels like it will be an ongoing work until our crossing over, which makes me frustrated in putting in the effort at all. Why attempt to create something if it will come out differently anyway?
Sometimes the difference between the ideal vs real can turn out better than worse case scenario though. In that case, I wonder if it was only better because I had a baseline thought in the first place. Without that thought, there can be no exceedingly abundantly above it. You don’t know if the outcome will be a pleasant one so your odds are always better by envisioning rather than not.
The question is how much control we mere mortals have over the course of our lives anyway. Is there a particular preset destiny for me, making my incessant efforts toward a personal goal futile at best? Or is the Divine inspiration that establishes the personal goal in the first place the mode destiny uses to infuse itself into our lives? Does God give me my heart’s desire and then give me my heart’s desire?
I loathe reading posts that ask more questions than give answers, but I’ve held off long enough from sharing these thoughts in an attempt to get the answer first. It has not come yet. At the very least, sharing my struggle with others can help someone know they are not alone in the questioning. Or perhaps it’s a plea to those who have figured it out to let me in on the secret.
Keep building those sandcastles and mosaics y’all.
Mickey Noella
Oh, and another thing...This post could frustrate some as I have been because I didn't have a tidy way of ending it to make it all better. Perhaps this is what it means to have faith. Dr. King said faith is taking the first step when you do not see the entire staircase. For now, I’ll take it day by day knowing what my good friend shared with me, "Life does not move in a straight line Mickey."
