You take the good, you take the bad,
you take them both and there you have
The Facts of Life, the Facts of Life.
There’s a time you got to go and show
You’re growin’ now you know about
The Facts of Life, the Facts of Life.
When the world never seems
to be livin up to your dreams
And suddenly you’re finding out
the Facts of Life are all about you, you.
It takes a lot to get ’em right
When you’re learning the Facts of Life.
What if Tootie, Natalie, Blair and Joe were right? Well, I would guess that Mrs. Garrett had a little something to do with all that learnin’. Sorry for getting that “Facts of Life” theme song into your head for the rest of today, over and over and over again. But, that song came to mind when I was thinking about how we look at things.
The only thing that we can truly control is how we react to something. Regardless of right or wrong, we can choose to focus on HOW we respond to something versus WHAT happened. Where do we put our energy? Let’s go back to the theme-song-of-the-day for some insight. You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the secret to life. In some cases, the good for one could be interpreted as the bad for another. I was recently chatting with a friend about her daughter being added to the transplant list. This transplant is a heart transplant. The hope for another chance, for an additional chance, for a longer chance at a full life for the recipient comes as a loss for the donor (and their family). Her comment was, “one person’s (family’s) joy is another person’s (family’s) sorrow.” Sure, there would be some happiness and joy that would come from the donor family’s sense of giving and seeing their loved one giving a tremendous gift; but, it comes with impact.
How we look at “Event A” determines our emotion, outlook and perspective. At times that pertains to the situation at hand, and in some cases; it may truly be our pattern or current theme in life. On nights when I just can’t get to sleep or I don’t sleep well I tend to think, “Well on the bright side I will sleep well tomorrow night.” One of the reasons I can’t sleep is because I am so irritated that I can’t get to sleep that all of my energy is wrapped up in the fact that I will be tired the next day. In many cases, I have to watch TV to distract my brain from what it is that I am so worked up about to allow myself to fall asleep. Most of the time I fall asleep to M*A*S*H, I have seen the shows countless times so I can name that episode in 3-seconds after the theme song ends.
I read somewhere –what we resist persists. Letting go is probably the answer in many things that happen to us on a daily basis. Hey, I think they call that forgiveness. When we forgive something then we release the other from the negative energy, AND (more importantly) we move it out of all that space in our brain/consciousness that it is consuming. Our hard drive space is unlimited, but the gears that run the whole thing can just get tired.
We can focus on the WHAT happened (or is happening to us) or we can just focus on WHAT WE CAN LEARN from this. It is our perspective – or outlook, or angle, or point of view, or prospect. Our lives consist of the cumulative effect of who we are and what we have become in life. We take the good we take the bad. An example I like to use is baggage and luggage. We ALL have both. We pack this stuff around with us EVERYWHERE we go. Our baggage is all that stuff we are afraid of. It is the stuff we don’t particularly like others to know about us. It could be our skeletons in closet, our dark side, etc. Hiding that gets laborious. Our luggage is all the stuff WE WANT people to see/know. These are the war stories we tell over and over (to the same people in some cases). These are the successes, our wins, and our championships that we are proud. BUT, our baggage is never far away. Baggage and luggage, we have both. Most of the time it looks damn good, it is a matched set. What is your baggage you could release? What could you forgive? Is there something you could forgive yourself? It takes a lot to get ’em right, When you’re learning the Facts of Life.
Theme song source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/ (seasons 2-5)
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