Get
What You Need
“Life
is like a ride through an old amusement park fun house.”
Maggie
Buck (Science of Mind, 2009)
There's
an old Rolling Stones song that goes:
“You
can't always get what you want.
You
can't always get what you want.
But
if you try sometimes, you just might find,
You
get what you need.”
Think
back to when you were twelve—how did you think your life would look
going forward? I wanted to be a doctor. I discovered, when I made a D
in Chemistry, and was deeply grateful for that D, that medical school
was a little out of reach. Then I thought I might try nursing,
but four years as a Candy Striper taught me I wasn't cut out for that
either. Long story short, I've had five different careers in my life
and I'm still looking.
Most
of us, myself included, get quite upset and irritated when life
doesn't give us what we want. We rant and rave about unfairness,
about betrayal, about how hard we've worked, how nobody understands
us, and so forth and so on. We feel terribly sorry for ourselves,
deprived as we are of our just desserts. We spend some time
depressed, deflated and, in general, miserable. But life is patient.
It waits until we've spent ourselves grieving the injustice of our
plight, and when we're done, it hands us the next chapter. Life will
have its way.
Life
is, in fact, like a fun house ride. It twists here and there, most of
it in the dark. Along the way, unexpected things jump out or fall
onto the tracks, and at points, we plunge into the abyss. Life
happens on its own terms. If we can buckle our seat belts and let go
of control, we sometimes find that where it takes us is even better
than what we had planned. It's entirely possible that life isn't
structured to give us what we want; instead, it gives us what we
need. Some of what it gives us is really hard to take; it wears us
down to a nub. But some of what it gives us is absolutely golden. We
must learn to take the good with the bad, and receive them both as
friends.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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