Sometimes life throws you a curve ball. Sometimes it slaps you dead in the face with reality and you have to take a moment to collect your thoughts and figure out where to go from here. My Mema had an expression she was particularly found of. God don't put more on you than you can handle. I loved my Mema but when she shared these pearls of wisdom I had recently gotten divorced. I was a single mom with three small children. No formal education of any kind and no idea how to provide for my family. I was in the middle of a rather nasty custody battle for my kids, was handing out money to attorneys and courts like it grew on trees. Was trying to figure out how a Mom who had no chance of surviving would make things work for her family.
Mema left us about a year after that. She died from cancer that had racked her body and invaded her brain. I often at times over the many years since have wondered if the old woman was lucid when giving me that pearl of wisdom. Or if she knew something that I was not blessed with at that point in my life. Because 2 decades later I am still here. My girls are all grown and have families of their own and I am quickly closing in on my dream of having my second college degree, as well as living a life surrounded by people who love and care for me.
Looking back I see now that her advise was meant to strengthen me for the tough times ahead of me. It was to let me know that although I had to make some hard decisions and do some things that others would think unreasonable, such as selling baked goods on Fridays to local office workers as well as working multiple jobs simultaneously, but I survived and that was the important part. My girls grew up to be responsible members of society and in the process learned to follow their own dreams regardless of how long it took to accomplish them or what they had to do to make it happen. For those life lessons early in life I am forever grateful and am sure my children are the better for having gone through it with me.
Life isn't easy, there is no sure fire way to slide through life and escape the trials and tribulations that often plague our happy existences. There will be hard times but hard times don't last but strong people do. Sometimes it takes a catalyst to make you wake up and smell the coffee. Many of us are sleep walkers. We blindly follow the rules of society never questioning anything. We do as we are told by our teachers, our parents, or bosses and at times even our partners. We do as we told because it is how we were raised. We rarely if ever bump the system or question it. Rarely do we ever step across the lines of "normal" societal rules. We tow the line, put our nose to the grindstone and continue on day in day out for our entire lives.
Rarely if ever do we get the opportunity to see life in a new light or with a renewed clarity that comes from hard times. We don't ever realize how important people are to us until they are no longer in our lives, we rarely treasure the things that a few decades later we will look back and think, why didn't I keep that or why didn't I do that when I had the chance. Life can be an exercise in futility at times. It can beat us down and make us want to say Uncle but if you never test those boundaries, you never question those orders, you never bump the system you will never know what you are capable of. You will never grow into the person you are born to be. You will spend your entire life as a drone bee in the bee hive of life.
That works fine for insects and some people are content to stay well within those safe boundaries and never question anything. Living their lives content in the knowledge that the actions of management does not fall upon their shoulders. But I saw something yesterday that brought all of this to mind. It was a post on my facebook it read "Well behaved women rarely make history".
The reason this is so important is because as long as we follow along and follow the rules we have no one to blame for our unhappiness except those we give our power away to. We cannot complain that life is unfair when we actively choose not to have a voice. We cannot stomp our foot and run to our room as we did when we were children, we have to stand and take the punishment dolled out by those who we have allowed to tell us how to live our lives.
Now I am not trying to incite a riot with my words today and say that life doesn't include some compromises or that we shouldn't on occasion allow others to make some decisions for us such as our bosses who hired us and our spouses who married us. But we can take control back of our own lives. Be it in small ways at first but growing with time into a mountain of happiness if we allow it to. By taking the first steps towards finding your own bliss you begin to take that power back.
You put down your foot and say I am not going to be a doormat anymore. I will not stand here and take your verbal attacks on my body, my heart, my family, my education, or whatever. We stand tall and we stand proud because we are a sisterhood. Women everywhere are taking back their power. They are no longer sitting idly by and allowing the world to harm those we love, or allowing those without a voice go unheard. We are out in there in the streets fighting for the unjust. We are boycotting those stores who sell products that we find offensive or wrong. We are in those shelters saving those animals who have tossed aside by our society. We are doing what needs to be done.
If we are willing to fight so hard for those we don't know or those who are important to us, why are we not willing to fight for ourselves? This is an interesting question I pose today. If you are willing to give so much of yourself to others, what is wrong with taking some time to make your own happiness a priority? Who knows you might just be a better person for having taken the time to enjoy your life just a little bit more. You might discover that you have a voice that hasn't been heard before or a tale that hasn't been told before or an idea that could change the world. You won't know if you don't try.
I hope my blog today has given everyone some food for thought. I hope it finds everyone well and taking that journey of self discovery and determination to actually get to know yourself. What makes you tick, what makes you happy, what is working in your life and what isn't. I hope that my blog finds all my readers, healthy and happy.
Until Tomorrow my blog buddies, be safe, be sane, and be happy.
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