Blessings in Boo-Boos

Stuff happens.  That was the opening sentence of yesterday’s original blog before the great delete debacle happened, and what could be a better example of stuff than that?  Lessons  Yep.  It happens when and where you least expect it.  There’s big stuff and little stuff and all sizes of stuff in between, but stuff it is, and the question becomes, so what am I going to do about it?

I got a chuckle out of the response from one reader who said that when stuff like that happens to her, she runs outside and yells “fire, fire!”  I am definitely going to try that sometime.  The neighbors may try to catch me with a butterfly net, but hey—that’s all part of the fun.

Fortunately, yesterday’s incident was a one-act play and I was the only actor.  Sometimes though, the stage is filled with an entire cast of characters enmeshed in a comedy of errors or a tragedy involving pain and suffering.  When personally involved in such a scenario, I like to pretend that I’m sitting in the audience observing the show from afar and not let myself become too entangled in the story.  When the play ends, I go home and analyze the plot to see what I might have changed, and study the parts of the players and my reaction to them.  Often, I rewrite the ending so that everyone walks away with a sense of peace and satisfaction

Ah, good old Pollyanna.  She loves those happy endings.

Then I take on the role of a theater critic, except instead of evaluating the play, the plot, and the acting, I look for meaning, lessons, and blessings.  Was it worth identifying with the pain or suffering happening on stage?  Was there a benefit involved, however miniscule or obscure?  Did I learn anything?  Is there something that I could have done differently?  If I had changed my reaction, might there have been a better outcome?

Sometimes I think that the stuff that happens is a set-up job to help us move forward on the pathway toward our own enlightenment.  Every glitch that comes our way arrives complete with an ending that allows us to learn a lesson, find a benefit, and embrace the blessing that is inherent within it.  The ending is up to the players.  We can choose happy, or we can choose unhappy.  Each actor decides his or her own role.

So did I choose a happy ending after yesterday’s big boo-boo?  Was there a lesson?  The world didn’t end because I made a mistake.  Was there a blessing?  Absolutely.  Once I recovered from the shock of what I had done, I thought the whole incident was hysterical.  I felt a profound sense of gratitude because I was able to recover quickly and whip out a replacement blog in the space of ten minutes, and enjoy the freedom of writing with the sense of wild abandon of dancing as if no one was watching.

God bless the boo-boos, for without them we would miss the profound teachings that life has to offer us.  The great lessons, gifts, and blessings always await our discovery, if we will but seek to find them.  Happy hunting, my friends.