[tweetmeme source=”schrecktom”http://tomschreck.wordpress.com/]

Delicious
Bookmark this on Delicious

Share/Bookmark

To order a Duffy book, click on one of the covers to the left.

Waiting to hear on something life changing can be brutally stressful.

Yet, it is a fact of life that this trip that we’re all on gives us very few iron clad promises.

Remember when they used to tell us that the stock market always outperforms every other investment? Remember when a state job, a teaching job, a healthcare job and a mortgage job were forever? Remember when wars and violence didn’t happen on our shores?

Remember when your parents and other relatives were young and strong? Remember the neighborhood?

Life changes.

We tend to fight that. We tend to get angry at the changing nature of things. We like predictable safety–it makes us feel secure.

The fact is that change and uncertainty are the rule not the exception. Anything run by people is likely to falter,become corrupt or at least, have periods of incompetence. People are fallible and the systems they create are as well.

How do we deal?

Some turn it over to God. Cool, if you have that kind of faith.

Others try to escape through all the compulsions we humans have to alter our awareness.

Some go through life petrified.

A small percentage learn to accept life on life’s terms. Life means uncertainty, unpredictability, death, tragedy and loss…some of the time.

Not all of the time and often not as much as we worry about.

The first step is acknowledging the reality of this trip. The second step is accepting that very often it doesn’t give us what we want when we want it. The third is to live life fully aware of what the deal is.

I want a guarantee of comfort. I want everyone I love to live forever. I want them to breed a dog that lives exactly as long as I do. I want the Red Sox to finish last every year.

Great.

The world doesn’t give a shit what I want.

It’s up to me to learn how to deal with that.