It’s really up to you, you know. How you’ll look at it. What stories you’ll weave around it. Back in the old days, they put it this way: Your attitude determines your altitude.
It’s true. And as much as we’d all like to drop our lousy attitudes at somebody else’s feet, the fact is we ourselves are the ones who hold the reins that determine our own pace and direction.
It’s not always an easy trick to do. Like anything else that’s truly worthwhile, mastery comes with a price. It takes discipline. And practice.
I got my first lessons in this holding-the-reins business when I was a mere toddler. I had this beautiful little rocking chair in my bedroom that played music when you rocked. Whenever I was being especially cranky, my mother would point to my room and quietly command, “Go sit in your rocking chair and don’t come out until you can be happy like the rest of the family.”
That may have been the beginning of my Joy Warrior training, now that I think about it. Good thing. By the time I arrived at this stretch of the road, I needed a lifetime of training to keep the door open for joy.
At any rate, I remember sitting in that little rocker, pouting and grumpy, with tears on my cheeks, struggling to make my face smile. It wasn’t easy. I had to let go of a big wad of dark, prickly, sticky feelings in order to do it. I had to see that seeing my mother’s own smile would make letting go of the dark feelings worth the effort it took to do it
I’m still working on mastery, by the way. Maybe learning to let go of the darkness is the only lesson there is.
But I keep working at it, because it’s still true that the joy of the reward makes the effort worth it.
I thought about that last night as I sat on my porch gently rocking in my rocker, the spring breeze warm and fragrant against my face, the songbirds’ evening carol floating on the golden air. And I smiled.
Warmly,
Susan
Image by Please Don’t sell My Artwork AS IS from Pixabay