I’m feeling a little pensive this evening. It was a good day. I worked out, got my laundry done, reworked & mixed a song for my own music project, visited with my mom, even gave my jade plant some love (I have a solid bonsai thing going, there). The evening has cooled off and there’s a nice, perhaps even blustery, wind blowing as I enjoy an iced decaf and turn my fingers to write another ‘TOTD’.
It’s not all wine and roses. My grandmother is in ICU recuperating from another bad fall. My uncle’s girlfriend may have ovarian cancer. One of my good friends is struggling with a budding cross-addiction. There is good news, though. My mom’s test came out negative for kidney cancer (it’s just an inert cyst). All of them will be in my prayers.
I’ve mentioned in previous blogs the luck charm I created recently, the newest addition to the altar in my bedroom. It’s not a luck charm, per se. The thing about luck is that people who believe they’re lucky tend to be. The opposite is true, too. So, the charm is more of a reminder to me that I am lucky, not so much trying to bring more luck into my life or make me luckier, just to help me remember that if I believe I am lucky, then I will be. Like a great master once said, “you don’t make miracles happen, you just see them done and they are.”
No sign yet of increased luckiness in my life, but I have been thinking about the subject. I don’t think of myself as lucky very often; it’s one of the reasons I made the charm, to help me tap into that force. I can see myself as fortunate, or maybe lucky in the sense that things could be so much worse. Like, lucky in that much worse things could have happened to me in life, not lucky in the sense that lots of good things have happened to me.
It’s true that I could have been through much worse in my life. I’ve never been homeless, I wasn’t abused as a child--not really. I’ve never really been poor. Broke maybe, without funds, but not poor. I’ve been blessed with a family that loves me and has always been able to help me out financially when I needed it.
I’ve had some challenges, sure. Lack of social skills, severely low self-confidence, and of course this devil’s disease always warping my perspective, trying to drag me back down. The worst hell I’ve had to endure in my life has been the prison of my own diseased brain. And it was hell, dear readers, so sayeth your humble author as he recalls his suicide attempts.
I’m lucky to have found the program, and damned lucky that it’s worked for me. Or maybe it’s that I’m lucky to have had the willingness to work it. I’m lucky that I didn’t permanently damage my body or my brain in the course of active addiction (though only time will tell about any smoking-related illnesses).
I’ve got a lot to be grateful for. Yeah, I’ve been pretty lucky so far. So many others haven’t been. What is it that lifts up one individual while another gets pushed down? Why are some of us subjected to torturous lives while others have had it so easy with so little effort? Maybe there is no why. Maybe it’s just the infinite diversity of the Infinite All’s chaotic creation.
I can look around and find someone who’s been more lucky than I have, and I can find someone who has had it worse. It’s not up to me to pass judgment on any of that, just to be grateful for the fortune I have had in my own life.
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