ONE MORE CHANCE
Last night, while viewing the most recent addition to reality TV, I couldn’t believe the trash they . . . Oh, wait. I guess with my whining I’m posting on the wrong side of this website. Let me start again. Fourscore and seven years ago . . . No, that’s not right either. Let me try again. Once upon a time . . . Egads! I sound like a blithering idiot. Give me one more chance, please. Call me Ishmael . . . Yikes, call me a shrink!
Often times we think we’re all ready to embark on a new venture. We’ve done our research. We’ve got our game plan together. We’ve even taken the first steps. But once we start, we sometimes find out that we really don’t know where we’re going after all.
We have an idea in our head, but it just doesn’t come out coherently. Or we have a good intention and try to pay it out in our actions. But we fail. In fact, sometimes we start out with one intention and through laziness, cowardice, avarice, or just plain fear, we lose our focus and slip back into old habits, maybe even self-destructive habits. We might try, try, try again, but still fail. The spirit seems strong but the flesh is weak.
Usually when those things happen we beat ourselves up. We tell ourselves what horrible people we are. We feel miserable in our failure. We wallow in self-pity and may then just give up, even though we didn’t accomplish what we attempted or didn’t learn a lesson valuable to our growth.
This creates a barren space within where our belief fades and our hope dies, leaving us feeling vanquished. But if we critically examine the totality of our experiences, we start to see patterns emerge. Mistakes we’ve made crop up again and again, until we finally overcome them.
Life keeps throwing them at us until we discover ways to work through our failures, whether they are strategic skills we need in order to perform essential tasks or whether they are moral dilemmas that have been stunting our personal evolution.
Once discovered, we realize the solution was usually a very simple change. It just required a shift in our paradigm. And paradigms are generally only self-inflicted biases that we rarely question and accept as immutable.
The saving grace is that we always have another chance to make things better. We may not be able to go back and change every event we soured by our past stupidity, but that doesn’t matter because what’s done is done. But, we can use our new-found knowledge to better our lives going forward, offering ourselves as living examples to others. Assisting them on their path, as we’ve been assisted by others. So, if you screw up, lick your wounds, and know that life will always offer you another chance to learn and grow.
Hence, once upon a time, fourscore and seven years ago, someone called me Ishmael as we watched the latest reality show on TV.
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So why do they keep it so cold in here anyway? I understand perishable groceries must be kept cool to prevent spoilage, or at least prevent spoilage until a hapless customer like me relieves them of that duty. But why must the entire store be plunged into an atmosphere so frosty it makes you wish for global warming?
Walking across these linoleum tiles with my sandaled feet feels like I’m wading across permafrost in the Arctic. In fact, that big butcher-guy at the meat counter, the one sporting the fake grin and bloody apron, reminds me of a polar bear just back from the hunt.
The cold has deadened the tip of my nose. It’s begun to run so badly, I’m forced to sniff mightily with a wet, snotty sound. It reverberates off the walls and makes Moms with their kids hurry out of my aisle. My hands are going numb now, too. I better hurry up.
I’ll have to abandon my routine of methodically going up and down each aisle, consulting my list (compulsively) as I remove each required item and place it in my shopping-cart (obsessively) — tallest to shortest, from produce to boxes and cans.
I avoid touching the crusty God-knows-what smeared on the child-seat of the shopping cart. I rush down the dairy-aisle and grab milk, cheese and eggs en route.
Likewise, I fly down the frozen-foods aisle and do a drive-by hit on the frozen veggies and fries, slamming freezer doors as I go.
I don’t know what the story is with the deli counter — why the deli-clerks insist on producing thinner-than-thin slices of meat and cheese. They call it “shaved”. The only thing I think should be shaved is my legs.
Personally, I’m tired of trying to extract a slice of ultra-thin deli meat from the package. It falls apart long before I can get it to the bread. I think if the store continues to insist on producing “shavings” they should issue surgical tweezers to their customers.
Now I’m mercifully standing on line to check-out and an older lady behind me is motioning to me like, “Hey, I’ve got only a few items and you have enough groceries in your cart to cure world hunger, so why don’t you be a dear and let me go ahead of you?” I give her the evil-eye, but she doesn’t take the hint and continues to smile sweetly at me.
I’m just beginning to relinquish my coveted sixth-customer position when the check-out gal two registers down suddenly unbars the chain on her aisle and motions us over. I sprint for it, but the old lady is too fast for me and gets there first, barring access with a strategic positioning of her generous hips. They span the aisle, from the candy case on one side to the magazine rack on the other.
I know when I’ve met my match, so I quickly scan the other check-out lines and decide to tackle a self-service one. (To be continued.)
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