Overheard at... Starbucks

“You could run around the parking lot naked; but they might arrest you for that.”

The rain was falling again in Portland, and some men were joking about the efficiency of walking in the rain rather than taking a shower. It was a great example of making lemonade from lemons.

This looking on the bright side of things is easier said than done though… especially when faced with many more weeks of dreary weather. While the rest of the country begins to be bathed in sunlight, our warmth will not come until July. 

Mother Theresa once said: I know God won’t give me anything I can’t handle… I just wish he didn’t trust me so
much.

Staying optimistic is much easier at the front end of a trial or  challenge than it is after it’s been with you for a while. Perhaps at the beginning it is easier to believe there is a reason for it; while at the end it feels more like someone has it in for us. Maybe this is why, to believe in karma, it helps first to believe in reincarnation… sometimes you have to take a really long view for things to make sense.

Or maybe, it’s not the problem itself, but not knowing if or when it will end that gives us the angst. I was talking with a friend recently about why I like to write about the twenty-something age. I think it is because, having been through it years ago, I can now laugh at how seriously I took everything. My problems with boys and jobs seemed so huge and unconquerable…when in reality they were like peas under the proverbial mattress. I suppose my writing is my way of being a Monday morning quarterback.

Currently I am confronting a far greater challenge. My new story is about a fifty-something woman; an age I am facing but have not yet lived through. Will I have the courage to write my own fears about that period? Have I
gained enough maturity to find humor in the challenges that I will encounter as I live through them rather than after they have been resolved? 
 
It seems a much more efficient way to live and to write…squeeze each lemon as it is handed to me, rather than at the end when I have a whole basket full. It also feels a little like standing naked in the rain… a wonderful  analogy for my yet to be lived life.