How’s your day, friend? Have you had a chance to get out over the last little while? I’ve managed to spend at least a few minutes outside most days, but the cold and the wind-chill got pretty serious the last little while. I guess it’s still the last of winter after all so i’m not complaining. Looks like it’s going to be warmer for much of the next week, though, well above freezing and into positively spring-like weather. I don’t expect it to last. Not just yet. But it will feel good as long as the warm decides to stick around.
I wish I could tell you that everything’s beautiful here. Things continue to be hard in some ways. But I think the task for us then is to make what good we can from the hard stuff, no? I suppose we all have things we learn to do when we feel the weight of hard times. Me, I’ll sit down and make a list of what positive actions I’ve managed over the last little while. And I’m not allowed to leave anything out. The list always surprises me somehow. Then I’ll use that surprise to leverage myself off the feeling that everything is hard–or more accurately the underlying, unspoken thought that ‘nothing is going right’. Funny thing about those unspoken thoughts, if they stay unsaid they can’t be challenged. And so they remain, like hidden truths. Hidden and completely impossible to defend against.
So one of my jobs becomes to try and put those unspoken thoughts into words. If I can put them into words I can examine how accurate they are. And when I take a close look the basic understanding that put those thoughts together in the first place often seems completely muddleheaded. Fairly easy to change my way of thinking then, especially with a bit of practice. But if I don’t get those unspoken thoughts out into the open there is no examination possible, no defense, and so the unspoken rules.
And that ain’t right.
Don’t get me wrong, when things are genuinely going badly this sorting out doesn’t make everything suddenly perfect. But it is amazing how much good stuff I can overlook given half the chance.
And, too, it’s amazing how much hard stuff I can get through given just a tiny whiff of positive.
And I suppose it’s also suprising how much thinking I’ve often been doing without even thinking about it.
And finally it’s really something how much unspoken thinking I can do that’s flat out wrong.
Which leads me once again to one of those amusements that fall out of my mouth and cause people attending meetings with me to giggle from time to time, “Just because I’ve thought something doesn’t mean it’s right.”
Folks think I make these things up. You and I know better.
Ah well, it’s getting late, I’ve been sitting here overlong. Nice to spend a few minutes with you, though. Thanks for the excuse. May the good weather find you right where you are. In the meantime I hope this finds you well.