Small Joys, Small Victories

You just never know when the crap is going to hit the fan. All you know is the fan is always on and stuff is going to be propelled in its direction. If anyone ever finds the plug, please give it a good yank and beat the whole apparatus into a really good cappuccino machine.

It would be easy  to lay down, curse the universe for your rotten luck and spend the rest of your "daze" in your favourite bathrobe, jamming down Cheetohs and watching reruns of Baywatch. Not that there is anything wrong with that, in small doses. After an appropriate period of moaning, you’ve got to pick yourself up by the bootstraps and carry on.  This is not to belittle the tremendous suffering some have to face.  Here the healing takes a lot longer and extracts a much greater toll.

Yet, most of our perceived woes fall into what my son calls “first world problems”: the internet goes down temporarily, we get a flat tire, or The  Husband takes too long to empty the dishwasher etc.  The list is endless. So what do we do to counteract our all too human tendency to see the worst in so many things? Well, we do what our mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers did: suck it up and count our small joys and small victories. Funny, but if we just look, they are as plentiful as our woes and certainly more psychically rewarding to dwell upon.

Here is just one example from this morning.  We woke up to 6 inches of snow in the driveway and two feet where the friggin’ plow kindly deposited its accumulated half mile load. On purpose. At the end  of my driveway. Did I mention ON PURPOSE? I am sure the plow driver backed up at least twice to get as much snow into my space as he could. His wife must have been on him before his shift for taking too long to empty the dishwasher.

With a lot of grumbling, I started to dig. And you know what. It sucked…until I changed my perspective. I gave my head a shake, flicked the dandruff off my collar and thought:  this feels good; I’m out in the fresh air; my dog is having a ball; aha,so that’s where I dropped the leather glove my son gave me for Christmas. Then  a snow-festtoned car pulled up, a frosty window got rolled down and I heard "hey, Bob, when you’re done, come on up to my place for a Scotch!”  Woohoo! Scotch for lunch. Small joy, small victory.

I’d like to continue with this theme for the next few blog postings. It’s very therapeutic.  If you have any small joys or victories you would like to share, use the Comments feature for this posting or email me at

theredcravat@yahoo.com

Just remember, it could always be worse. The fan is always on.

This post is dedicated to L. at Canadore College who so thoughtfully sent to me a lovely book entitled "Don't Forget To Sing In The Lifeboats".