Focused on the Wrong Things

I could spend the next six days getting more and more granular about all of the ways life is supporting meI don’t think I could fill thirty minutes listing the ways I feel life is not supporting meOh, I know I’ve filled many hours complaining about itBut it’s really just a small handful of things. Important things, far-reaching things, but just a few of themObjectively, it is astonishing that I continue to spend an inordinate amount of timePaying attention to the 10 things that aren’t going my way, compared to the 9,532 things that definitively areMy daughter’s first report card contained over 40 “Outstanding” marks and 3 “Satisfactory” onesWhich do you think she focused on?Where do you think she got that proclivity?This weekend of Thanksgiving accentuated the broad highways of gratitude coursing through my lifeOnly a few of which are under construction or closed for repairAnd I can muster a little tenderness for the part of me stopped at the closed exit thinking this is the only way for me to goInstead of moving into the flow of the wide open roadWhat is it that stays banging my fist on the closed gate?Who knows, perhaps the gate will openThere’s no ‘right’ way to move through life, but there sure are softer waysAnd that softness starts on the insideThe tenor of the conversation starts on the inside.Why is it that we can be so hard on ourselves?Why has hard work and discipline become more revered than support and encouragement?It’s a weird dynamic, and part of the signature of this current moment in history.When my daughter wanted to go to college, we had to make a transcriptBecause she only went to 7 weeks of high school, we had only the barest frame to start withShe was convinced she’d done nothing of value that could be counted towards a meaningful transcriptObviously she hadBut because it didn’t come in all of the prescribed, inspected, and dated packages of the common experienceIt was easy to pretend all those benefits and experiences weren’t quantifiable or didn’t existBut they did exist. They developed naturally and instinctively and to the exact degree of interest and usefulness.It’s like this gorgeous meadow of experience not getting counted because we’re counting only roses and dahlias as valid or importantThere is a moment when we stop making life come to us in roses and dahliasAnd the tidal wave of beauty becomes available where once there was a feeling of lackMy daughter did eventually develop her free-range experience into a valid transcriptNot a single college questioned itAnd now her cycle has come around to making her established curriculum-based college experienceMeaningful for employersA no less formidable taskBut it’s just a challenge of the dayIn a life being constantly supported and upheld by air and nourishment and biological processesConstantly singing the song of belonging and careA song I hum along to, even as I sometimes bang my head against my circumstancesToday, I will focus on the melody This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fallingtenderly.substack.com