In which I stare down my limitations and look for ways to still wrangle joy out of life wherever I can.
You've Gotta Go Down Swinging
Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps
I grew up with a baseball Dad. He likes other sports, but baseball is his favorite. By a wide margin.
I became captivated by the 1998 home run race and we went to a lot of games together. We live in Illinois but in the shadow of the St. Louis Arch, so we're Cardinals fans. Despite the revelations that have come to light in the interim, it was an exhilarating time to be a part of Cardinals Nation.
But that's not the point of my post. My point is that, like a lot of sports fans I know, my dad uses sports metaphors for many life questions. The one that I think has stuck with me most over the years is "There's no shame in striking out as long as you go down swinging." (Walking is fine, too, of course, it the pitcher isn't throwing strikes.)
What this means, to me, is that the only way you truly fail is if you don't try. This is where my perspective that I can't give in to my health problems originates. If they really do take me out of the game, that's OK, as long as I did what I could to stop that from happening. I certainly falter at times, but eventually I get it together and try again.
I mentioned that I am enrolled in a writing course with SARK. One of the things I write is whimsical rhyming poems on all kinds of topics in the realm of personal development. (I even had one published which SARK herself endorsed! And it just happens to be on sale for $5.46 at that link right now...)
But that's not what we're talking about right now. We're talking about going down swinging. So here you go...
Blowing It
Now you’ve really done it. You’ve messed up big this time.
You can barely think of a punishment severe enough to fit your crime.
The sense of shame and guilt is so strong you just can't lift your head.
You long to crawl under the covers and never leave your bed.
Wallowing can feel exquisite when we believe we deserve our pain.
And we can grow to love the melody of self-blame’s endless refrain.
But a danger lies in curling up with misery and despair.
They trick us into thinking we cannot move on from there.
They fail to mention a simple truth tear-stained eyes can’t always see.
No matter what mistake you’ve made, you’re only as stuck as you choose to be.
If this little bit of rhyme has you feeling quite perplexed.
Stop regretting what you’ve already done. What will you do *next*?
There’s simply no undoing things that lie in the past.
But the power of the present is wonderful and vast.
What can you do in this moment to chart a different course?
When channeled into change, regret is a formidable force.
Human beings make mistakes. There’s just no way around it.
If there’s a way to avoid messing up, I don’t think anyone’s found it.
So the truth of who you are inside is not found when you blunder.
It’s revealed in where you go from there - just in case you wonder.
Honesty and humility. Admitting that you were wrong.
Saying sorry and meaning it. These will help you right along.
Then look for the lesson you needed to learn from the whole unpleasant mess.
It’s the surest way to not wind up right back in the same distress.
Once you’ve learned, put the whole affair squarely in the rear view mirror.
And don’t look back, only ahead. That road is so much clearer.
It will lead you on along your path to the person you’re meant to be.
Still not perfect, prone to slipping up, but nevertheless: FREE.
- Melanie R. Cannon, 2016
Oh, and for anyone else who grew up with all this sports talk as advice, you may enjoy this video from one of my all-time favorite TV shows, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.
This is not going to be a post about fresh starts. Well, not exactly. It's a post about the trickery of fresh starts, especially those rooted in external events: New Year's Day, the first day of school, or the beginning of spring. These events are rife with trickery because of one simple truth: no matter how many things in our lives are new or different or fresh, we still bring ourselves with us. So if you really want things to be different, you have to figure out how you're going to keep your habits and patterns and thoughts from repeating you right into the same choices you've always made and actions you've always taken. Because we all know that just gets you what you've always gotten, right? For me, this means trying to fight past my impulse to eat something really easy that requires almost no effort after having a particularly stressful day. But it also means having plan-compliant foods that require little or no preparation on hand and ready to go for when ...
I identify with Kate Winslet's character in the movie The Holiday so much more than I care to admit. Her monologue that runs over the opening credits sums it up pretty well. ; Only I've been mired in this nonsense for far more than 3 years. For a long time, I thought this was a character flaw in me, a sign of something deep-seated and pathetic. But recently, a good friend sent me this article which explains what allows a fixation to endure for so long. "You know, limerence can be unending," Tennov says. "I've interviewed subjects who've nursed a fixation on their limerence objects—LOs—for decades." What's the trick? "Their feelings were unrequited," she reports. "Their LOs gave them mixed signals, like ignoring them for months and then calling. Hope, confusion, and uncertainty kept it going. The phenomenon is defined, in part, by feeling a loss of control. The limerent person can't stop thinking about the LO: What did he mean ...
Do you ever have one of those days where every bad decision you've made in your life just sort of piles up on you and you feel like a miserable excuse for a human being who has wasted your time on the planet and won't ever be happy because how can you deserve to be happy when you're just a giant screw up and also guilty of writing ridiculous run-on sentences? Yeah, I'm in the midst of one of those. It's just the absolute worst. It was brought on by a Netflix re-watch of a favorite show, of all things. I usually do this each year in January, because I find January to be the most depressing month of the year and I really enjoy this show so it kind of counteracts the misery. But I didn't do that this year, I guess because January felt more hopeful than usual, with the end of 2020 finally arriving. This show debuted in the fall of 2000. I had gotten married that June, and it already wasn't going well. This program aired on the evening my husband had his bowlin...
Comments
Post a Comment