What If?

"The night is long to the wakeful, a distance of ten miles is long to the weary; the road of life and death is long to fools who do not know the truth." Buddha

A great deal was made yesterday about the date being 06/06/06. It reminded me of the brouhaha on 12/31/99 where people were terrified about 2K and all the computer systems in the world crashing. Much Ado About Nothing.

I think that too often we allow ourselves to be caught up in fears of our own making. We look at situations and see things that might happen or could happen or there is a possibility that this or that will go wrong. We spend so much time looking over our shoulders for what may be behind us that we fail to see what is in front of us.

We allow ourselves to become depressed and fearful about things that are out of our control. The other night illustrated this when my brother fretted and stewed about the computer system at work crashing. It was not something he did. Yes it impacted the ability to do our jobs with ease and we had to rely on paper rather then computer records but it was something that while inconvenient was not earth shattering. It is a lousy antiquated system to start with. Deal with it but allowing yourself to become all upset is not going to fix the system. That is what the computer gurus are for.

One of the things that flabergasted me about my ex-husband was his pessimism. He could see gloom and doom in every little thing. What if this happens? What if that happens? What if he or she feels this way about me? What if he or she doesn't like me? What if?

I believe the only way to deal with what if is to deal with things as they happen. Yes you plan but the best laid plans of mice and men can go crazy. You need to learn to deal with it. When I was running my convention a friend gave me a t-shirt that said "No battle plan ever survived contact with the fans." It made me laugh then. It makes me laugh now.

You do what you can to be ready for what life throws at you. You plan for the future the best you can but you need to be flexible enough to take those curve balls it will throw at you. The key to happiness is to take things one step at a time. You deal with life in all its insanity and do the best you can. That is all that anyone can expect of you and that is all you should expect of yourself. The picture is my illustration of one of my favorite quotes, "you can climb any mountain if you take it one step at a time."