WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN?

What do you do when? When the sky is falling Chicken Little?  When everything you counted on is crumbling?  When anticipation of an event either good or scary evaporates into thin air?  What happens when you gather your troops around you and you aren't sure if they are really there or not?

I for one withdraw. I find a time for downtime, time to do nothing. I try to find the abundance already existing in my life.  I try to focus on the simplest of luxuries that could cheer me, such as an hour of Tourandot, a pint of chocolate fudge ice cream, a yummy soft blanket and a snugly dog on the bed with me.  I know the lack of abundance in my life often comes from worry, fretting, anxiety, deprivation of sleep and an excess of pain, both physical and mental.  Lack of time and energy and little to no time with loved ones causes me to stumble and wobble and compete with my new progressive lens to find my way.

What do you do when the people you once totally relied on appear to be slipping further and further away?  What do you do when you feel your life is slipping away? I expend a tremendous amount of time on caring for others.  Tally this against what I expend on myself!  One provides me with  happiness and a light feeling...the other a feeling of fear that sometimes is hard to get rid of.  So yes I, like most of you I would imagine, have one foot in both worlds. What should we do when we need a shoulder to lean on and it just isn't there? Excuses don't work in this space.

A difficult person or circumstance causes us to feel things we don't want to feel.  So do we change the way we respond to them?  Or does that worsen it? Or do we walk away? I want to be awakened this morning with an internal AHHAH!  I want the answers.  So perhaps, if I listen and pay attention the answers will come.  They always seem to don't they? We expect one thing and it doesn't materialize.  We tell ourselves that, "I guess it just wasn't meant to be."  But was it?  Did I mess it up?

George Orwell said, "Happiness can exist only in acceptance."  Rats!  Sometimes I don't like accepting things the way they are.  I want to fight and rail against them.  Instead I turn inward and try and hide from the pain.  I found out a long time ago that bodies heal, but the spirit and soul can take much longer.  Nothing happens by mistake.

When is it time to let go? When is it time to untie yourself from the negative?  From the people that say one thing and do another.

So as was said in "Meet Joe Black" ~ "I am looking for that whisper or thrill that there is no sense living your life without."

For me caring for 'my' warriors is sacred.  I am not motivated by how good I am doing.  I am just helping one person one dog at a time. This is when I feel most alive.  Perhaps that is all I need or should need.

But on the other hand Buddhist tradition asks, how can we put anything new or more into an already full cup.  So it seems that when I am feeling empty and alone, I am in a cycle where I have to find a place to go and reflect and prepare for a new cycle.  So today I will realize that dreams don't come true all the time.  And that instead of being the victim, I will be empowered to move on to the good things that just might be around the corner.  The place between ''no longer and not yet." I will let go and trust the mystery.  For the music is made by the space between the notes.