When Life Becomes Unpredictable

"Life is unpredictable and you never know what is coming next. Don’t ever get to comfortable. Always be ready to change.” - Unknown

Hello Dear Friend,

This morning my thoughts turn to a friend of mine who was torn about committing to be a vendor at our local Art In The Park market this morning. It was a spur of the moment, last minute thing, someone else had dropped out and she got the unexpected email asking if she’d like to participate in this month’s market for the following morning. She was weighing out her options and telling me how technically even though she wasn’t planning on it she did have enough pieces prepped and ready to go to where she could participate. It would just mean changing her weekend plans and having a lot to do that evening and would cause her to burn the midnight oil Friday night to get ready. After talking it over with her husband she decided to opt out since it was clear that the rain forecast was a big concern. Well, the rain hasn’t seemed to have let up since I awoke this morning so I can’t help but think wise choice my friend, wise choice. She called it!

Here is a quick rundown version of other things that have been going on this week. Admittedly most of these are low-points but there are a couple of highlights mixed in there too. Monday night was spent tossing and turning while being jerked awake by what I’m going to call night terrors – not sure where that is coming from. I came into work Tuesday morning after the holiday to be greeted by an email informing me that my boss’s mother-in-law had passed away over the weekend and he would be out of town/office that week. Later on in the week, I listened when a friend’s voice cracked as she shared with me that she’d received some not-so-great medical news regarding her daughter. Throughout the week I’ve kept having surprise findings of mold damage on various possessions which leads me to question if that is part of the reason for me not feeling 100%.

Let’s not forget that yesterday was a major anniversary marker for our country. Can you believe it’s been 19 years since the 9/11 terrorist attack on our nation? We still have yet to recover from that. Aside from conspiracy theorists, who would have predicted that day and the fallout that came with it? Many mourning the lives of loved ones lost in the World Trade Center or the lives of those on the planes that crashed that day. How quickly we’ve seemed to have forgotten the lives of those loved and lost, the men and woman who willingly were first to respond on the ground without hesitation. How about the heroes that arose and who lost their lives going headfirst into battle and fighting in a war that was forced onto our country as a response of action caused from the evil aftermath of those attacks on our nation? Then there was the stock market crash in 2008 that left a devastating number unemployed for years as a result the recession entered our history books as the worst economy blow to every hit the U.S. as the numbers of the unemployment rate surpassed The Great Depression. Now 2020 has brought another hit to our country and economy as we continue our fight for recovery from the Global pandemic of a virus created in a Chinese lab and named after a beer. Many have been forced out of their business by our governments unfailing attempts to control us.

But hey there is good or at least that’s what my social media news-feeds are showing. There are photos being taken in hospitals of happy couples welcoming their newborns into this world, birthday’s being celebrated and vacations being taken. Continue the scroll down the news-feed and there’s a photo of my cousin’s hand sporting a new ring as the post announces her engagement. Then there’s the beautiful photography showcasing another one of my cousin’s in her senior portraits as she celebrates entering into her final year of high-school.

“You can’t pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that’s the blessing.” - Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

It’s true we live our lives full of unpredictable moments in unpredictable times. A lot of it is bad but a lot of it is good too. Life is so much more than black and white, good and bad, pretty and ugly and light and dark. With death there’s life, with pain and sorrow there’s joy and celebration and through the challenges and heartaches of life, the curve balls and twists and turns: we learn, we grow, we become someone greater and more enriched than we were before. Sure, life is ever changing and living on earth is like being in a continuous scavenger hunt. Constantly heading off into the great unknown we search chasing after the wind not just to find the gray and gold but to pull them out of the black and white so that we can add them to our crayon box. As we collect new experiences and growing memories throughout our journey we bring more color into our life both in the moments we just roll with and the ones we create.

With love,

a Poetic Soul