How I Built My Summer Kitchen

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten  ~  Natasha Bedingfield

If I stop and look back at the past few months I find that I have been in a very bad mood.

I try very hard to be an optimist but I have to admit that lately I find myself standing with my toes on the edge of that fine line that crosses into the land of pessimism. It has become harder..near to impossible…to keep the mask of optimism in place.

Perhaps it’s the never ending angst and calamity in the world. In the interest of time I won’t list all of the hate by category, i.e. race, gender, sexual orientation….. so let’s just call it what it is:

People against people.

These stories seep into my brain to the point I want to scream out loud and I have to turn away in despair and utter exhaustion.

I know there are still many, many good people in the world. They want to make things better, make things right. What I am finding the more I look around is that this is becoming an uphill fight. Up a hill the size of Everest.

In addition to any outside influences, my inner turmoil is affecting my already finite patience. It is at this point little more than a distant memory. I have none. My desire to be nice seems to have packed a small bag and joined the exodus. I feel like an emotional volcano, waiting to erupt at any moment without warning spewing crazy, burning rain down on the world. Anybody and everybody in it. I have been taking ‘fake it ’til you make it’ to a whole new level.

I have just felt like checking out, moving out and moving on, disappearing into the proverbial woodwork.

My life is run like a machine. Constant movement. Continuous motion. No time for anything but what the job entails and yes, I have days when I think of raising my children and running my household as a job. One with lousy pay and meager benefits at best. On the rare occasion I find my self alone in my car, on yet another tedious errand for toilet paper or some other trivial shit, I turn up the music and consider never coming back.

My sanity returns just long enough to scream, “Stop!”

Yes, it is mentally draining to hear about the indifference or disdain people have for one another but why am I letting the pessimism and anger of the world affect me so drastically?

When will I wrap my head around and learn to accept the fact that with age comes change and not all of it good?

Why would I even consider for a millisecond leaving a home full of the people I love the most, who love me back and consider me their most important person?

Because sometimes it’s hard? Because I’m tired?

Fuck that.

Yes, life can have periods of time when it feels like a load of bricks with one, two, or three more being piled on daily. It can be painful and the struggle to carry it can seem impossible.

If I lift my head for one moment….raise my eyes to life level and see what is in front of me, have the good sense to shrug off the weight of martyrdom and self pity for just a moment, I will see many in front of me. Folks with wheelbarrows and work gloves paired with strong shoulders and willing hearts to help me unload that burden.

If I shrug off a brick at a time, two if I’m able, I can focus on what’s important in each minuscule and very fleeting moment in time.

I know if I just allow it more of those bricks will fall away or be lifted away by others I didn’t expect.

I imagine one of the most interesting thing I will find is that of the people standing in front of me there is a mix of not just family and friends. There are strangers, too.

I am making the effort to bring back kindness to my life.  I realize that this is the only way the bricks will fall. My life is not a job. It is a gift. Every day I wake up warm and healthy and each night I will go to sleep clean and well fed, surrounded by people who love me even if these days they are simply tolerating me, and I get to do things so many others wish they could.

I get to hold these precious people, my family, for every single second that they allow me and thankfully that is still quite often.

Most importantly, I simply get to live. Where is my gratitude for that simple grace?

So today, I will work on dropping the bricks. I will bring the kindness back.

I will be generous with compliments.

I will hold open a door.

I will smile at strangers.

I will pay something forward.

I will make time for silly.

I will love and be loved.

With each act of kindness another brick will drop.

And I will use them to build myself an amazing summer kitchen.

 

In my recent mindset I have had a terrific case of writer’s block. This post was quite literally written in my head while my husband and I were laying bricks for a summer kitchen on my back deck…proof positive that a writer’s inspiration can be found just about anywhere. 

 

 

 

Judge Not

How would your life be different if you stopped making negative judgmental assumptions about people you encounter? Let today be the day you look for the good in everyone you meet and respect their journey. – Steve Maraboli ~ Life, the Truth, and Being Free

As a human, a person with emotions often worn on my sleeve, I find that I don’t like being judged. Who does?

However, in the past week…or more, I have found myself doing the one thing I try not to do. I have found myself judging another person, making assumptions about another human while not having even the slightest clue what makes them the person they are.

Every one of us are born and from that day experience joy, sorrow, love, hate, happiness, anger…the normal range of emotions. However, some of us also get the added struggle of abuse, addiction, soul damaging heartbreak, sickness of the mind or body, or the involuntary participation in watching someone we love fight their own battle, be it mental or physical.

These parts of our personal history form us, can jade us, and sometimes defeat us. At the very least they can catapult us into a darkness that we might manage to climb out of only to find that the person we once were….is gone. Someone else has taken up residence in our soul and no matter how hard we try, that new part of our personality digs in its heels and becomes part of our permanent make-up.

It happens.

If I sit and wonder what is wrong with the world today I would need to look at my small part in it. I sit in judgement of someone, knowing they have not been dealt a perfect hand in their past. This would be the time for me to take a long, hard look at myself and wonder what gives me the right to appraise this person’s individuality.

We all sin differently.

Truth number one: There are no rules that state that just because you play on the same playground you have to like everyone on it. I don’t have to like all the people. And all the people don’t have to like me.

Truth number two: As long as I get up every morning and try my best to do the next right thing and I can put my head on my pillow at night knowing that I did just that, then what other people think of me…well, it’s really none of my business.

I don’t always get it right. Many, many times I get it wrong. It would be easy for someone to look at where I came from and who I used to be and judge me accordingly. Since I don’t live there anymore, that would be wrong. I have managed to leave that person and most of her shortcomings behind. I say most because I am still a very flawed human but have made my peace with it.

Not everyone has found that peace. I need to be more aware of that and show some grace.

That is, after all, the next right thing.

photo credit: Gavel via photopin (license)