Some days are just not doable, right? Simply said, it doesn't matter what your frame of mind is, your heart, body, and soul are just not in sync. One is sleeping, one is shopping and the other one is a playful child romping around in the backyard. Finding focus is next to impossible.
I am currently in a personal rework. I have returned to full-time employment and am truly struggling with the adjustment of how to juggle work and play. Changes in adult life are not as fluid as they once were. Old people just get tired more easily. As a kid, the hours of our day were filled with unlimited imagination and curiosity. As an adult, we tend to suppress that inner child in favor of predictable safety. Responsibility, expectation, and physical needs make it too risky to just have fun and enjoy the moment. But then something slaps you upside of your head. Life is just too short to sweat the small stuff. It is essential to take a minute and acknowledge the abundance of blessings ever present in our lives. Yes, I know, that sounds like a Deepak Chopra meditation order. Don't fall into that pit. Just take a deep breath and accept it for what it is - common sense. I have to tell myself that daily. Recently, I came across a story about German-Peruvian Mammalogist, Juliane Koepcke, who specializes in bats. She became famous at the age of 17 as the sole survivor of the 1971 LANSA flight 508 plane crash - just one day after she graduated high school. Mid-flight, the plane was struck by lightning and began to disintegrate before plummeting to the ground. Juliane was sucked out of the plane and fell two miles into the Amazon Rainforest, still strapped to her seat. Miraculously, she survived. Sadly, her mother died in that crash. She spent 11 days, alone, searching for help, with a broken collar bone, cuts and bruises, and a concussion. On the 9th day, she came upon a local fisherman encampment and found supplies that allowed her to give herself rudimentary first aid. When the fisherman returned, she was transported to a more inhabited area and airlifted to a hospital. Wow. Just wow, right? I am hard-pressed to believe I would have had that stamina and perseverance at 17. And ever since I read that story, I have been hard-pressed to remotely think I have a not-so-great life. I am incredibly blessed, more so than many. So, I suggest next time you feel overwhelmed, enter meditation mode and imagine surviving 11 days, alone and injured, in the Amazon Rainforest pouring gasoline on your wounds to kill the maggots that had taken root. You will have an epiphany: your life is undeniably good. Ah, but that is fodder for yet another rant.
Share your thoughts! Click the word Comments below and tell me what you think!
4 Comments
Terry
3/3/2023 10:07:22 am
Actually maggots eat dead flesh only and have used often in modern times to debreed wounds. With that being said, it would take several very large men to hold me down if they wanted to do that to me.
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Jacque Stratman
3/3/2023 09:30:47 pm
HA! Doesn't matter what they eat, they were hungry and attacking this poor girl! But it is true that they have been used in medicinal ways throughout the centuries. I bet, though, if that treatment was your only option for healing, you might not fight those very large men...! lol
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RLH
3/3/2023 11:53:58 am
Mmm..thank you (?) for that graphic story on this dreary, Indiana day...HA! You, too, Terry....
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Jacque Stratman
3/3/2023 09:24:56 pm
See? This is why I write for me, and only me. I wasn't being "graphic," I was sharing truths. This is a true story and very uplifting. And to me, it was also inspiring and humbling and, obviously so, thought-provoking. Would I have had that foresight and been that brave? I don't know. But I thank my maker that I never had to know. And, how can it be "brilliantly disguised" when I said it outright? Yep, I'm among the working class again... RLH you crack me up!
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AuthorJacque Jarrett Stratman |