Lately I have been running headlong into the curious melodrama that is my generation making its values (or more often this week, lack of) known. For the record, I am proud of us on the whole. But a few are still discovering there is no entitlement in the real world. We make our own luck and determine our fortunes. You can blame karma all you want but it is a lot less other-worldly than that: One reaps what one sews.
Decency and honest work: It seems to me there is not much more to it than that. Ultimately, this life-thing is not all that mystifying. If you're looking for happiness, you're not working hard enough. Either you work like a dog every moment to do it all correctly, including just being a human being, or you try to skate and we all know where that ends. Stop looking; start workin'. At everything.
In a week full of news reports about the misuse of Twitter and Youtube and young, unsteady lives lost over them, and the drama I have unwillingly watched unfold in my own life among adored souls in my my world, I did what I always know to do: I worked. Just kept my head down and concentrated. Quietly forming my own opinions and occasionally ferociously making them known, but on the whole, staying safely inside my work-is-the-only-course-of-action in all scenarios bubble.
I assure you this has not endeared me to some. A lot of people want you to take sides, help them make someone love them, write a check big enough to solve all their problems... Actually, all that would only be the beginning of the end for people not laying the truth bare and owning up to who they are, and worse, what they need to work diligently to correct.
What I am saying, perhaps in a clumsy maneuvering of veiled references, is that all that can be done to change one's fate is too work to change it. Break your tail making fixes. Fall down: hard as you can. Get back up like a prize fighter. Accept your next scrape. Repeat doggedly. Never give up.
You are on a horse in this life, ride it until broke and when the last day comes, slide into home and knock St. Peter over then grab a glass of wine and regale the heavens with tales of the battle wounds of a fearlessly lived life that worked until the second in made that final turn for home.
Don't amble into the gates full of woes and might-have-beens. I won't have that for you or me.
While all this bright luminous living is your life's work, the best I figure you can do by others then is to be cognizant of their feelings because they need to get back on the horse too, do the best you can to be fair, always give it to 'em straight, and above all else exercise human decency.
It is this last point that has me stumped as I write to you: We all get to times when the world we live in creates a momentous amount of exhaustion and you would just like to find a place to nap and listen to the roar of a big ocean. The sheer indecency of the world in this last week has me thinking that at times you have to work to rest too. A little escapism does not necessarily mean you are not working at overcoming something. So, that is my plan.
In these pictures, you have been visiting my sanctuary: Half Moon Bay. With any luck, all of you gorgeous readers and I will converge there for a Blushing nap one day.
Get to work on some rest on this holiday of ours, Gorgeous Creatures.
10 comments:
The California Coast I would go to often as a child.
My mother is from San Francisco and her family still lives there. So we would go up and down the coast on summers growing up.
Great post, Blushing. Reggie firmly believes that none of us are responsible for where we came from or what hand of cards we were played, but all of us are responsible for what we make of our lives. Plain and simple. With admiration, RD
Lovely and so true.
Have nice day.
Teresa
Your comments are my mantra in full Catherine! I also adore Half Moon Bay, the images are stunning!!
xoxo
Karena
Art by Karena
I knew exactly where these photos were from. I even like to stay at little B&Bs there. Listen to the fog horns. Forget all manners of bad behavior.
Thank you for this post. It's timely and nice to hear a reasoned opinion. I think these words are so important that you wrote..."quietly forming my own opinion". So true and so necessary in this age.
You are a wise woman and beautiful writer. You and Dominique Browning should collaborate on a novel....I hear the same depth of insight in both of your "voices" and always look forward to thinking about everything you say. Thank you.bkoskinen@comcast.net
What an important message. Far too often we think that somehow life will just happen easily or without effort but the good things, the important things take work. We need to stop treating work like a dirty word and embrace it for what it really is- the manifestation of our priorities. Watching a couple or a family (or even an individual) come to my office and commit to doing the work necessary to improve their relationship or life is one of the greatest joys in my work. Thanks for reminding us all how important it is that we put effort into everything we do- even making time to rest.
Best post ever!
Well said!
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