Loved your responses to this week's WWYDW. I personally reacted A-D, and in order!
Okay, there are plenty of things I’ve learned this past year of my life while I’ve been digging deep into myself to live my year of wellness. Wellness doesn’t happen only on the outside of the body, in fact, I think we’re all the wiser now and know that you cannot be well on the outside if your inside isn’t in tip top shape. And I don’t mean that you work out 4-6 times a week, and eat only organic. I mean that you take care of your thoughts, and make sure that your emotions don’t govern you. This has been one hell of a year of teaching myself how to be well from the bottom of my soul, which eventually will be present via my outward appearance as well.
I am, as they say, a work in progress.
So when it came to learning that there was no running water, or even one connected toilet at our cottage, yet our moving truck was loaded and ready to hit the road, I must admit, that I reacted in A-D, and in that exact order.
I started by threatening Yannick that he could just go on his own. That I would stay in the city with the boys and take myself out to lovely dinners, lounge in our beautiful city backyard, tan and dunk in the spa should the heatwave get to be too much.
From there I became completely overcome with anger and did B and C in tandem. I furiously texted the general contractor, who was conveniently not responding, expressing my utter disappointment for his not being on top of our project enough to know that we were without those bare necessities. I cussed him out (in my head, Yan’s taught me you get more bees with honey), and then I cussed Yannick out (outwardly because marriage has its privileges) because together they had one job. To make sure that the cottage was ready for the move in date. And neither managed to make sure they knew if that was an actual thing.
In the end, I settled nicely into D.
I settled into D because I was reminded of how petty it is to be upset that a cottage, which is not my main home, was lacking the bare necessities, for many reasons. One being that I have the most generous and wonderful best friend next door. A place to wash, and to cook food. Then I took myself back to my trip to Haiti last year. Where I sat in a tin hut, of two rooms with no electricity, no running water, and no indoor toilet, and listened to a young woman, the same age as my middle daughter, share about how she lost her young baby just four months earlier. And I realized that I was being an entitled, first world, first class asshole. So I put my blessed ass in the drivers seat of my luxury SUV and took myself up to that “summer home” without running water, and got down to business, side by side with my husband, and got to work of being a part of the solution to our very minor problem, rather than adding to the problem by being a first world douche. Because the reality of life is there is always somebody who has it much better, and far worse than you at any given time in this game called life.
And this my friends, is called perspective. Having it, and putting it into practice. My year of wellness is going well, but, I’m still a tad embarrassed that my go to in the heat of major upset such as the one we experienced last week was to freak out. There is still much work for me to do, but man oh man, am I ever thankful that I at least now have the discernment to catch myself in a moment and turn myself around. Back in the day I wouldn’t have even recognized that I was out of line and needed to reel myself back in. So thank God for personal character progress. I guess it’s not true what they say. You most definitely can teach an old dog new tricks. Well at least this dog anyway!