A line cast, a hope followedWednesday, July 14, 2004
Weeks like this one uncover a huge discrepancy in my faith. Wrestling.
I am having one of those weeks where if something can go wrong, it does. In fact, even things that seemed DESTINED to turn out well have crashed and burned unexpectedly. I am an optimistic person in general. I refuse to ascribe bad luck to my karma, or to any divine punishment, or to any system at all.
But I'm liable to do my damnedest to find some cosmic rationale that allows me to trust that in the long run, this stuff will all turn out for the best, as irritating as it seems in this moment.
Obvious discrepancy. If there's no system creating the bad luck then I can't exactly put my trust in the nonexistent system to create order out of the chaos for me later. And trust in that is my only solace. Gratitude used to work as a back up, "thank god it's only this sort of problem and not that other huge one I'm terrified of." Well actually, it still works to keep my perspective in place, but I am a bit suspicious that it also works to devalue any feelings of sadness, loss or anger that I summon up at the actual problems. Here, put them in this box that's labeled "It could be worse you know" and deny away any difficult feelings. Heh. My whole family does that one, immediately upon learning of a misfortune for one of us, we lightheartedly point to how minimal it is compared to, say, conditions in Sudan. That went out the window for me after commonbeauty pointed out that gratitude about escaping another person's misery is a strange and rather scary thing.
So I'm left with this underlying doubt that maybe I am destined to have everything go wrong this week.
Ick. Feels like a self-fulfilling prophesy. Worse yet, a great rationale for the next 5 or 6 self destructive behaviors I can engage in. I tried to shift the energy tonight, took the dog for his walk and then took myself off to see Harry Potter, which left me feeling quite a bit better. Only to return to another blast of bad news left on the phone answering machine while I was gone. Then cynic in me slyly whispers there's something out there thumbing its nose at my over-confidence and I've brought it all on myself.
I wonder why I don't just allow myself to just cry when things go wrong.
