When giant elms are swaying on southwest breezes and gardens are bursting
with hollyhocks and black-eyed Susans, we know summer is well along. I
love to watch Lily, our young Golden Retriever, twist and scratch her back
on the thick green grass out back. I know how she feels. Like her I want
to live this season with gusto!
Early one morning about two weeks ago I was playing golf with my good
friend Joan. Dew was still heavy on the fairways when I hit my ball into
a deep sand trap. Climbing into the trap, my feet slid out from under me.
I was flat on my back in the sand with a painful jammed shoulder before
I knew what had happened. After a few days of rest the shoulder mended,
but I have taken a lot of razing from good-natured friends about falling
into sand traps.
Isn't that just the way life works? Everything goes along smoothly for
a while, then one day, out of the blue, we hit a sand trap. It can be something
simple like my fall, which required only a slight adjustment, or it can
be huge, even life threatening. How well we negotiate life's sand traps
is really up to us.
Choices For Getting Out of Traps
Given that metaphorical sand traps are a normal part of living, it is
important to view them that way. You have the opportunity to handle the “traps” that
appear on your horizon gracefully, and perhaps even benefit from them.
The choice is yours. Here are some of the choices or responses you can
make:
- You can choose to accept the situation and work with
it, or you can choose to fight it.
- You can decide to turn a lemon into
lemonade, or you can let it ruin your life.
- You can learn valuable
lessons, or you can cling to the past.
- You can move on, or you can get
stuck in the situation forever.
- You can decide whether to let this thing
control you, or whether to retain your personal power and dignity.
- You
can decide what adjustments are necessary and make them, or not.
- You can
explore what opportunities are available to you now, or you can resist
change.
- You
can check your attitude. Is it working for you or against you?
- You
can analyze your strengths to see what will serve you best at this time.
- You
can understand that trouble comes to everyone. You are not a
victim, just a human playing in the game of life.
I am a huge believer in working with what the Universe puts on our plate.
Sometimes we are handed great gifts and joys and sometimes we receive setbacks
that range from a flat tire to the grave illness or death of a loved one.
Whatever is present on a given day is what we have to work with. The way
we respond makes all the difference.
The most powerful thing we can do is to live with what is, to experience
it and learn from it. That is when we become one with the world instead
of in opposition to it. We get into trouble when we become overly attached
to life turning out the way we had imagined. Sometimes a problem becomes
the vehicle for leaving a legacy of courage and a life well lived. Sometimes
what the Universe has in store is far different than we had hoped, and
sometimes, in the end, it is far better.
Fearlessness is required to face some of life's sand traps. Sometimes
that is accepting that we are powerless. Sometimes it is taking a leap
of faith that feels like we're hurtling through space without a safety
net. We dig deep into our personal reserves to find the stuff we're made
of. After all the fuming and fretting and back peddling, we realize that
we must move ahead, even if that is accepting the situation with grace.
As the old song goes: “get up, brush yourself off, and start all over again.”
The alternative to actively working with the present is being stuck in a
sand trap for life!
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