I think life is too complicated... Sometimes I wonder if anyone really has everything under control... If you're reading this and you feel like you have your whole life under control, please do share your secrets with the rest of humanity because I'm immensely curious.
I tend to think that these days all aspects of life are worse or at a disadvantage from "the olden days.".. I have no clue when "the olden days" began or ended, but that is beside the point... As time goes by we have more choices in life, which is positive when taken at face value but I am going to take a stand and say I think too many choices hampers our ability to live with minimal stress.
A friend of mine, who used to be a fellow manager with The Carvinator at the Place With a Helpful Smile in Every Aisle, uses peanut butter as an example... He wanted to get a jar of peanut butter, but found himself standing paralyzed in front of the wall of peanut butter trying to decide which jar to choose... He started to panic because he couldn't make a decision of which peanut butter to get!.. He estimated that he spent 20 minutes staring at the wall of peanut butter, and then decided to count the individual choices: 38 choices of peanut butter.
Now, peanut butter has really not that much significance in the bigger picture, but it sure makes a good illustration in my mind... In a different context, I think about bigger choices young and not-so-young people have to make in their lives in 2006, everything from what to wear and eat each and every day, whether to marry, to divorce, to have children, how many children, what job to choose, what career path to choose... With more individual choices and freedoms come more consequences with each choice, and unfortunately, more opportunities to fail.
Since I'm reading The Little House series to the girls lately, I think about Laura Ingalls Wilder, and how I kind of envy her path of life... She didn't really have to choose anything..... Her life story was chosen for her; when she got old enough she became a teacher, then she found a husband, married, had a child, and lived happily ever after... Her husband came from a farming family and was a farmer... His path was pretty much chosen for him also.
Okay, I'm not so naive as to think this really is the ideal or even what really happened, but I'm just in a mood where it looks pretty good to me right now... I do very well when I can just make the best of what I'm given to deal with, but I don't do well when I have to be the one to choose which path to take, or which peanut butter to choose, if you will.
What makes it worse is trying to have an open mind... An open mind means even more choices, more consequences, more experiences--good and bad--and....yeah, more stress... This probably explains why when I am feeling at my best and most able to deal with life, I am also at my most opinionated and less able to see other points of view... GK Chesterton once said, "The purpose of an open mind is the same as that of an open mouth - to close it again on something solid.".. I think there's a whole lot of truth in this, and GK Chesterton is worth a look if you've never read.
Now that I'm figuring all this out, am I going to run out and live a life of indistinguishible clone-days, putting the clamp down on my mind so as to minimize any choice or idea that may present itself on any given day?.. Probably not... But I'm realizing that there may be a good reason why people called "set in their ways" are called such.
I think I'm going to just get the creamy Jif with the red lid from now on... Who wants to waste all that time figuring stuff out?
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