Perspective

Have you ever been floating on a cloud only to have someone come along and knock you to the floor? Have you ever reached a point where you were finally getting where you want to go, when suddenly you get blindsided by something else to throw you completely off balance? Well if you haven't all the better, but for those who have we all know it's not fun.

As I have mentioned before, things were finally starting to go our way, we got what we needed to start our lives over, a real fresh start. Here we are excited that we're now able to implement our plan when out of the blue a friend decided to cash in on an old agreement, leaving me stumped as to how to fulfill his request. After trying to reason with him (and getting nowhere) I am now in an impossible situation to which I (currently) have no solution.

I am not bringing this up to gain sympathy (though it is appreciated), but rather to try and learn from even a dark situation a positive lesson. We must always remember that even when things start going our way the other challenges in life are still there, and therefore not to let ourselves get carried away with our successes in other areas, to think that because one thing is going well that everything will follow suit. Life is a continuous challenge it's how you approach it that makes the difference. Will you allow yourself to rejoice over a success (albeit a relatively big one) and forget the rest of your troubles that remain, or will you remind yourself that yes there are things that are going well but that does not mean you're out of the woods just yet. Don't get me wrong, revel in your victory however minor it may be, just don't allow it to let you lose sight from the rest of the picture. How is this a positive lesson one may ask? Well even though now yes it's painful, but in the long run having suffered through this situation, I will be all the more prepared never to let it happen again. At the end of the day what you really have to do is decide whether to wallow in self pity, or find the kernel of good that can be learned.

Coincidence or Providence?

Moving is never easy, having a solid moving plan without the resources is quite a bit harder. It is there that doubt and insecurity start to come in. There you are questioning your every decision and wondering if you're doing the right thing, when out of the blue the big man upstairs sends you a sign (at least that's how I see it, skeptics would call it coincidence).

As I have stated we have the former but are still working on the latter, which again is causing us to doubt ourselves. Whatever the case we decided to put the plan in motion by working out the details necessary for transporting our stuff. We contacted a friend of a friend who is also moving to the same town about sharing a lift to transport some of the stuff we want to take with us, to which they agreed, though we had never met them. Now we knew how to get our stuff there but still had no plan of how to get ourselves there - enter: more insecurity in our decision. Not knowing what to do we tried to turn to several people for help but one by one we were refused . At this point we just started getting worried that maybe all that we have planned and talked about was for nothing. So there we were disheartened and insecure with ourselves and our decisions. However we decided that no matter what, we were going to do what we felt was right.

Cut to today : My mornings always start the same way, take my son and his friend to playgroup then get to work, same thing day in and day out. This morning, taking the kids as usual, my sons friend started telling me all about how her mother went on a trip out of town for a few days (of which I had already been informed), while walking to the bus stop to catch the bus that takes us to the playgroup someone called out my name. I turned around and saw someone I didn't know, so I asked him who he was and how he knew me. Turns out that he was my friends friend whom we had made plans to share a lift with, he had over heard what (he thought was) my daughter had said and assumed that it was me. Sign number one.      
 A few hours later my wife called to let me know that one of the people we turned to had called to let us know that they can help after all. Sign number two.
 We now have everything we need to make this move possible.

People can look at this story and read into it however they want some will just call it coincidence, others (like myself) will see providence, a guiding hand that is really running the show. I know that I can say that the lesson I've learned from this experience is - Life is never easy and G-D wants you to know that, however if you persevere and fight for what you feel is the right decision, the right move, He will help you to get to where you want to go, just don't despair there is always a light at the end of the tunnel.
   
   

Daddy When Will You Make Me A Man?

Sometimes I ask myself, after a long day of seeming monotony what can be gleaned if we truly looked back at the days events? What can we learn from even the smallest encounter the most fleeting of sentences?

Today was just one of those aforementioned days in which everything was routine. My son found an old bag of lanyard (boondoggle, for those who also find that name hilarious) men I had made while still in high school, when he asked me what they were I showed him that they were little figurines made out of a special plastic string and promised to make him one of his own. All day he repeatedly asked me "daddy when will you make me a man?" , to which I replied that I'm working on it (I really was), and so it went for most of the day.

Looking back at today's events nothing sticks out, but when i think back to this seemingly simple back and forth between myself and my son I realize that this was just a condensed version of what my job as a father really is. "Daddy when will you make me a man?", really that is our greatest task as fathers, to raise our children to be men, who will do the right thing whatever the situation may be. What I need to figure out now is did my reply have any relevance to the broader meaning of this interaction or was it just something I said in the literal sense of what we were talking about? To this I have no answer, though I hope I did, and if not, well now that I have raised my own awareness to the deeper level of today's events I will surely try that much harder.