Thought Picnic: The lessons of why not me

If I could freeze the time

The preoccupations of my mind and my thoughts have been distracting me from my place of calm and peace that I have not been able to concentrate.

Every little demand suddenly feels onerous and burdensome, I have sought ways not to interact or communicate so that I can hopefully rediscover where I hope to be.

If only and if only one could freeze life, put things into some sort of cryogenic suspension until a time when one is ready to resume at a point where recovery and refreshing is complete.

Alas! There is no such luxury for holding time, space and existence in a standstill, we have to work through things towards the result we want with the hope that we get to that result we desire.

Why not me?

I recall a cartoon of Hägar the Horrible that I saw recently where the protagonist was lamenting, “Why me?” and God answered back, “Why not?”

You find cause in that kind of exchange to count the blessings of the victories that have come from the circumstances, how in life one has been toughened through experience and earned through labour. Where luck might happen, but planning was the foundation on which the success was built and study was what gave birth to knowledge that you apply with wisdom.

We do need the good times and the bad times to appreciate what times we live in, whatever time we have left and those are thoughts that appear to invade my thinking more and more each passing day.

The lessons in the passage of time

I understand that there are many lessons I would never have learnt and learnt well if I had not had my own lived through experiences. Hard and rough times I have barely shared, the scars indelibly seared into my being that they have become my life and my own personal story.

The greater feeling is one of gratitude that none of my trials, temptation, tribulations or travails consumed me. I found help, I found support, I found strength and like the dawn always comes after the night, no matter how long the night seems with all its fears and nightmares – it will pass.

It does pass, it shall pass, it must pass, because that is the mystery of time revealed to all of us, it passes continually for new refreshing seasons to come.

I will rise.