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Pollyanna?

This may be a surprising post on several different levels. Things are the same as they have been for numerous weeks now. Still waiting and responding, still not choosing my day but having it chosen for me, yet I have taken a paraphrased line from aptly named serenity prayer that everyone has heard countless times before:

Work on changing what you can, and not on what you cannot.

For me, I believe I have actually begun to take this notion to heart, at least in the ways I can. For me, I have always thought of my role in life as to be that of one of SERVICE to others, service to try to make things better. This has always seemed to me to require struggle and strife... a mental fortitude that would make me feel it was appropriate to agonize and struggle and even hurt myself in order to struggle to fight for the common good.

While noble, I think that perhaps my struggle, my service, my work has not been as far reaching as I would like because I did not recognize its toll upon me and how that toll could, would, and did prevent me from other work I could also be doing.

Tonight, in the face of significant adversity which included the following:

1. Nurses caring for my mother not being able to tell me the medication she was currently taking.

2. Health care workers who at one point in the day saying my mother should be sent to an low-level, long, long term rehabilitation facility, and at other times said she should be sent to a medium-level, multi-week rehabilitation facility, and at still other times suggesting she should be sent to an intensive two week high-impact rehabilitation facility, to still others suggesting that she should just go home. To the concluding comments when I left being... we don't know where she will go or what we will do.

3. My wife feeling "emotional".

4. People at work who kept interupting my precious few minutes where I could actually work and get things done.

Instead of allowing myself to feel the anger, frustration, despair, confusion I typically would feel, I instead tried to work harder, work with less concern for myself, and to try harder to not try to change that which I could not.... basically letting go of the anger and frustration at the ambiguity of the hospital, accepting the emotionality of my wife, and ignoring as much as possible, the chaos of work.

The end result.... basically the same as in the last several days.... pretty darn near NOTHING was accomplished.... but in the same vein, I felt the anger, the stress, the fear, and the worry less than I did as I struggled and struggled.

I have always admired the fictional Don Quixote, the fellow who tilted against windmills. Yet perhaps my willingness to do the same is my downfall? Perhaps I should just stop? Maybe it would improve my life. Perhaps in much the same vein, I should simply stop much in my life... coffee, perhaps smoking my pipe, perhaps the occasional hard boiled egg at lunch, perhaps the occasional drink, perhaps anything distinctive of life?

It does seem easier, more serene, more restful. Perhaps that is the key? Succumb, align, integrate, sublimate?

No more windmills? Perhaps.

PipeTobacco