Dramatic Incident Pending

Just read a story about a couple who was getting married. 

Everything was fine. 

Nothing went wrong. Everything went off without a hitch. I kept waiting for a dramatic incident. Kidnapping, cheating, person left at or near the alter, car wreck, I don’t know. 

Usually there is something that hitches the getalong. Then it gets solved and we carry on. 

But we carry on, I think, more appreciative of the good in the face of the bad. 

When things go good for a while it can sometimes be easy to slip into taking it for granted and then getting sort of bogged down in the little irritants that can fill the empty space of out everyday routines. 

But, when something big and bad happens there is a cleaning up of mental clutter to only focus on the important things. 

I call it getting hit with the Perspective Stick. Sometimes life will whack you a good one to make you pay attention. Like the monks in the stories did. 

After my mom died I had a clear moment when I needed to go to the store to get toilet paper because we were low and I remember being so mad that my mom was dead and I still had to get tp. It seemed so unimportant and mundane when this big thing had happened. And that even though my world had stopped, the whole world hadn’t. 

The pain, to me, is a blinding white hot fire that it burns through the drybrush, clearing away any useless tinder laying around. And you can clearly see the rocks that remain; family, friends, kids. 

So while I certainly appreciate the times when nothing particularly exciting is happening as a time to rest and regroup, I try to hold on to that nugget of clarity from the painful, exciting dramatic incidents that have happened.