They say that if you put your request out into the universe, the universe will sometimes reward you.
I was talking with a friend earlier tonight. Her daughter -- young, 20-something, capricious -- just came back from India, fresh with inspiration about Truth and Happiness, and Living a Life of Goodness.
She and I laughed. It wasn't a good laugh. It didn't feel good in the stomach, not a full-throated, heartfelt laugh.
It was a "she'll see" laugh.
I don't even like those. First, I don't like belonging to the club of Those Who Have Been Skewered by Life. Of course I don't. But I like it less that I've nearly become that jaded older woman who longs to feel the joy of her youth. I mean -- I'm not that person. But in the instant of that laugh I was. I knew the depth of disappointment and regret that one can have when people around you talk about friendship and family ties, but who demonstrate a lack of actual concern for your well-being. I'm not bitter. But I was, for a long time.
But you can't carry that stuff around with you. At some point, you realize that you will, in fact, live the rest of your years. To carry resentment around is like wearing a suit of armor. The heaviness and thickness protect you from the world, but you can't enjoy yourself in it. At some point you have to allow yourself to feel the air on the outside. At some point, you have to remember that once you were a girl who had hopes and goals. Maybe not even that long ago, relatively speaking.
So, I'm trying to fashion a career away from business intelligence, which is basically the data equivalent of sudoku, except the puzzles have millions of rows, and hundreds of columns. I would like to get back to renovating properties (even though I have no money to invest) and I would like to write when I'm not doing that. I need to move my body for my health, and I have no time for that now. And I'd like to spend time guiding the footsteps of a child who calls me "Mommy".
Any of these things would fall into the category of "luxury" for so many people who are just trying to scrape by. And I should feel fortunate that I have a job at all, even moreso a well-paying one. But if you just keep rolling dreams around your head, that's the only place they'll happen.
I haven't the slightest idea how I'm going to accomplish any of these things, and I have way too much debt from being sick, and then a caretaker, and out of work for years before now. And I don't know how I'll ever pay it all off, and still make this dream happen. But I seem to keep having ideas, so you'd think I could come up with a few for my own dreams? I guess I'll put on my thinking cap, and see what I can figure out.
But as for fate, and all things out of my control? Here you go, universe. Let's see what you can do.
