I needed a few days to get through all the good noise. The reels, posts, comments, and catchy songs from folks celebrating the outcome of the midterms, and the oh-so-good reminder that good things can still happen.
Sometimes it arrives at just the right time. Other times, completely out of nowhere, when we didn’t even realize how much we needed it.
There’s been a LOT happening in the world. I mean a LOT. Things that have been pressing heavily on many of our necks, personally, collectively, politically, and everywhere in between. Why so much of it had to be the downright exhausting extended version, I’ll never know.
Along with all of that, I still want to switch things up, make changes, and take some risks. And risks don’t always need to come with extreme danger. You won’t see me throwing myself onto some hellish front line of a protest. Not when some won’t even fill in a circle on a ballot sheet in the comfort of their own home. Nope. The risks I’m thinking of need to be logical, a lil’ scary and out of my comfort zone, but not harmful to me. I’m still going to keep learning, participating, and planning for good. And of course still resting. My 92%, now 93%, Black American Sistahs told me to, and I did, I am. The memo still hasn’t changed.
Pushed to Switch Things Up
So when thinking of said risks, think good risks. The times when you suddenly have to do something unbelievably hard, or walk away from what isn’t working and move to do something you’d never even considered.
And whatever effed-up situation you might currently find yourself in, let’s get into the habit, and hone the practice of looking for the positives. We gonna have to dig deep on this one because, like it or NOT, but we can’t pretend the difficult stuff doesn’t exist. And it won’t be the last time it comes around to find us. That bitch stays on repeat!
But maybe we can flip it around and find that there’s something powerful about remembering that the difficult shit isn’t the ONLY thing that exists.
Or persists, knowing full well that more effed-up shit will be around the corner. Such is life. But so will the good.
It’s too easy to find 8,000 ways to sit in our misery. We can replay conversations, overthink decisions, question recommendations, people’s intentions, wonder what we could have done differently, and spend a bloody unreasonable amount of time wishing things had played out another way.
Yet they didn’t.
Moving Through the ‘What-in-the-Actual-Hell‘
Rough, tough, and exhausting… yeah, I know.
But weird lil ol’ me keeps trying and so was thinking, maybe we need to make up a little cheat code for ourselves.
A reminder that no matter what happens, we’re going to find a way through it. Over it, under it, around it. And if need be, we’ll two-step and slide our way through it, too. We’ll figure out how to live with it and maybe, at some point, find some kind of odd peace with it.
Sometimes the effed-up shit is only here for a season. Other times, it’s more like the last diabolical 24 months, which felt like one long stretch of what-in-the-actual-hell! And sometimes it’s a hurt that stays with us for a lifetime. Unfair, hell yeah! And if we could stop it, we would. If we could maybe fix it, reverse engineer it, or jump into a time machine and completely undo it, well, we would do that, too. But unlike Marty McFly and Doc, we can’t travel through time.
Getting The Good Stuff
So what do we do?
We take lots and lots of deep breaths and we’ll do the next best thing and continue to surround ourselves with the people, the ones who will never stop showing up for us. Making us laugh, dance, or curse our way through it. The ones who remind us of who we are when we’ve temporarily forgotten or slipped a bit, because life or the world starts acting up again.
I already know we can’t control all the things, and it didn’t take me being in Big Age to realize that. We can make plans, have expectations, do everything we’re supposed to do, and still find ourselves somewhere we never intended to be. And there will be moments we absolutely won’t enjoy. We’re not meant to. I’ll happily hate them in private when I’m reflecting on them, or express it as loudly as I please when the rage hits me, thank you very much. Don’t try and stop me. But this has to be when my cheat code to pull me out of that funk gets deployed to refocus my mind in remembering to see and love on the overwhelming good.
So to me that means channeling all the things, and Walter D. Wintle’s poem, ‘The Man Who Thinks He Can‘, fits the bill, too.
The Man Who Thinks He Can
by Walter D. Wintle
If you think you are beaten, you are;
If you think you dare not, you don’t.
If you’d like to win, but you think you can’t,
It is almost a cinch you won’t.
If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost;
For out in this world we find
Success begins with a fellow’s will
It’s all in the state of mind.
If you think you’re outclassed, you are;
You’ve got to think high to rise.
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win the prize.
Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man;
But sooner or later the man who wins
Is the man who thinks he can.
We can’t tie up every loose end, solve every problem, or mend what’s permanently broken. But we can always keep trying to leave room for the good things in life. The unexpected wins, the inappropriate laughter, the new beginnings, the little victories, the bigger changes, the people who show up regardless, and all those moments that remind us there’s still plenty of good on the way.
