Get Over It!
“The assignment is to get over your self. The assignment is to love the God you did not make up with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and the second is like unto it: to love the neighbor you also did not make up as if that person were your own strange and particular self. Do this, and the doing will teach you everything you need to know. Do this, and you will live.”
Barbara Brown Taylor (An Altar in the World)
I had tickets Saturday night to see the Alabama Symphony Orchestra backing up a rock band that covered The Eagles greatest hits. The night was the first freezing cold one we’ve had this winter. I was tempted to beg off; I had a little bit of a scratchy throat from the sudden cold snap and could have parlayed it into a good excuse. Instead, I found myself in the balcony of the Alabama Theater, a restored, turn of the century, ornate, red-velvet opera house, belting out Eagles songs at the top of my lungs. One of my favorites is ‘Get Over It’. The last stanza goes:
“You drag it around like a ball and chain
You wallow in the guilt, you wallow in the pain
You wave it like a flag, you wear it like a crown
Got your mind in the gutter, bringin’ everybody down
Complain about the present, blame it on the past
I’d like to find your inner child and kick its little ass..”
Perhaps it’s a bit harsh; there certainly are injustices in this world, difficult circumstances of growing up, difficult families, poverty, dark stuff, but we Westerners have made our suffering into a religion. We have blamed our current miserable state on our past miserable state for too long. It’s time to ‘get over it.’ We’re still using our misfortune as a reason we should be allowed to succeed regardless of our own efforts and if you don’t believe that, just watch one of the TV talent shows, in which contestants recount the pitiful circumstances of their childhoods and end by saying, ‘This is my ONLY chance…I HAVE to win.’ Please.
I have to say, in all honesty, that I have been one of those unhappy people at points in my life—I didn’t like her then, and I don’t like her when she rears her ugly head now. The problem with whining is that it that it keeps me stuck like a hog in mud. As long as my energy is going into nursing my wounds, real or imagined, I will have none to forge a new life and a new way of being in the world. So, here’s what I suggest—wallow for a while—five minutes, maybe ten, and then get up and get on with life. Just outside that pity-parlor is a world waiting to be discovered.
Getting over my self,
Jane
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