Today I’m stumbling.

Sometimes as I’m moving along on my journey I come to obstacles that are hard for me to overcome. You see I have anger issues.  I’m the kind of person who gets irritated at people easily and frustrated quickly, to put it mildly.  My late husband used to tell a story about going a computer store to correct a cord problem. The tech person hassled him about it so he said to him, “Listen, my wife is a very angry woman who wanted to come in here and rip you a new one. I thought I’d save you that but if you’d rather deal with her…..” He came home with a new cord. And since I’ve gotten into more than one bad situation because of my road rage, I had to buy a paper fan-like device called “Smile on a Stick” to disguise my face so I won’t get killed.  Yeah, I’m that person.

I know that I have a very deep well of anger to dip into. I also know that a lot of my anger is justified. But that’s a big club. Let’s face it, most of us have lives that are disproportionately filled with things that are sad, unfair or outright outrageous.  Some of us deal with that reality better than others. I deal with it with anger. But when I dip into that well I don’t right any wrong, nor do I achieve any goal. I just wallow in past issues and fall into a behavior of negative energy.

What I have come to realize is that the difficult events in my life are pebbles in the road. In the larger scheme of things they are small and scattered.  If I respond with anger, then I’m stumbling. And if I stumble on the pebbles, how can I expect to get to the place where I can extend love and compassion and be of service honestly with an open heart? (Please see my very 1st post on “The Bow”.)  I really want to get to that place.

So I’m getting up, brushing off, picking up my “Smile on a Stick” and moving on.