Yesterday, we rushed down the driveway to pick up my car from one repair shop to take it to another. But Moxie-dog chased us down the drive, Ken got repeated phone calls interrupting us making plans, and he ended up driving to the wrong place later to get me. Waiting on the sidewalk for him to drive back to the right place, I called my daughter, only to have extraterrestrial screeches disrupt us. By the time we got home an hour later, there were more mishaps involving mistaking a tanning salon for haircut place where Ken needed to drop something off and a lost wrench.
But that’s how life is, isn’t it? It’s usually not one small mishap but a series that snags us. Because this is far from my first pile-of-mishaps rodeo, I told myself it was just one of those elongated stretches of slapstick time when either you yell or laugh. I chose laughter, but I was still pissed off.
What I’ve learned, and I’m sure you have too, is that all of this can and does change on a dime. Take Sunday night, for instance, when I was crazy-angry and exhausted thanks to a jumbo-plate serving of stress noodles with a side of a migraine salad. But a short time later, when I went downstairs to apologize to my son for losing it, everything turned to sweetness and light. Within an hour, we were all watching the great documentary, John Lewis: Good Trouble, which put everything into much vaster perspective.
For years now, I’ve been trying to remember when good things or bad things pile up that this is what they do. An unexpected check comes in the mail, a long-lost friend sends a love letter, a cat purrs on my chest, and a lovely breeze sweeps through with the scent of summer’s last roses. An hour later, it’s be the opposite. When things are just as I like them, I try to remind myself that this too shall pass as well just as it does when everything’s got to shit.
Some of us are better, and all of us are better at one stretch than another, at riding the waves with a big-picture perspective that everything is in motion, is changing, is getting what we might call worse or better. Then again, life is so much a maybe reality:
There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically. “Maybe,” the farmer replied.
The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed. “Maybe,” replied the old man.
The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy for what they called his “misfortune.” “Maybe,” answered the farmer.
The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. “Maybe,” replied the old man.
Which goes to show that we rarely know what these waves mean or even what we truly want (barring our common desire for sane and compassionate leadership, action to slow down climate change, world peace, and an end to hunger, racism, and other forces that harm us). So what does this mean for an afternoon of crossed wires and frizzled frustrations? Just that life doing its thing, pummeling our idea of how things should be before rolling out to sea to carry us on glimmering waters before the next wave and next dazzlement.
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