don't worry, be happy

Have you ever come to a point in your life, be it a difficult situation or a relationship with someone, when there is literally and completely nothing more you can do about it. You've expended your talents, used your resources, given of every ounce of effort, thought, and soul to the task and cannot complete it because it leaves the boundaries of your control?

It is a difficult feeling, often one of despair, panic, and anxiety. You had hoped with all your heart, worked with all your might, and dedicated your life to accomplishing and overcoming, and for what? To be halted, derailed, or stopped short all because you had reached your utmost capacities, pushed your limitation, and spent more of yourself then you had.

Runner's call it "hitting the wall"

It is in this times, these crucial points of life, where we have two options. 

Sister Longhurst showing us
that sometimes we have too
much on our plate!

See we're gonna get scraped
up in life sometimes

The first option is to become embittered, cumbered, angry, frustrated, vengeful, rageful, beaten, licked, depressed, and filled with regret and misunderstanding. 

The second, is to let go and let God.

Easier said then done, this second path is one of relief, peace, and serenity. It is a path of lighter living and days with soft breezes. We learn to stop fighting the wind and adjust our sails to catch the heaven sent help. It's not always rainbows and butterflies it's compromise and acknowledgment of our own insignificance and lack of control in the universe. Because when it comes down to it, I am only in control of myself. 

 I can only control me, and you can only control you.

When someone makes us mad, when something halts our progress, when all the elements combine to hedge up our way, know that this opposition is a test of the control that we DO we have over our own self.

There is so much I could say on the subject and there are nearly endless directions to take and almost as many lessons to learn, but the focus of what I'm trying to get across isn't about how to make better use of that control, or how to fight the storm. It's not about dealing with consequences or changing how we feel in these wall hitting situations. 

 What I want to get across to myself and to you is to let go, and to let God. 

 And if you don't believe in God, then to let go, and let the natural course of the universe do it's thing. Why worry about what you cannot control? We can go inside ourselves and examine with honesty what we do and do not have power over and when the discernment has been made we can then verbally, mentally, whateverly, say to ourselves, "I'm letting it go."  Doing so will relieve a heavy burden. It allows a breath of fresh air into our lungs! And the wall we just hit evaporates and we are able to move forward with the feelings I previously described.

Don't worry, and be happy. Don't worry about these things any longer.  Let them go, walk them to the door, bid them goodnight, and feel happiness as the unwanted guest of bad feelings of inadequacy, anger, or whatever it may leave your life in that moment. Don't worry and be happy. Let go and let God.

This post was inspired by Bob Marley's "Don't worry, be happy."

"Look I'm not worried.  Be happy!"