by Pat Blair

Created on: April 13, 2009   Last Updated: April 15, 2009

Uncomplicating Our Lives ... It Doesn't Have to be Rocket Science 551 words

Sign on the wall at the neighborhood Dairy Queen: "Life isn't about waiting out the storm. It's about learning to dance in the rain."
What is it about us humans, that we insist on making our lives so complicated? We can't enjoy the sunset today because we're too busy fretting over the "stuff" we need to make us happy tomorrow. From cradle to grave, we can't seem to enjoy our lives our selves unless we have the right equipment: the brand-name clothes and shoes, the "right" car ...

And we plan. We tell ourselves and anyone else who will listen that life will be perfect: after we graduate, after we get married, after we get the divorce, if we only could go here or there or somewhere else on vacation.
We're so busy pursuing happiness that we forget it's all around us, ours for the taking.
It isn't about the state we're in, it's about the state of our thinking. It's about being mindful of what's around us ... all day. Every day.
It's been said before: Stop now and then to smell the roses. And some of us roll our eyes ... "Yeah. Sure. Whatever."
But more and more of us these days go to bed exhausted, wake up feeling not much (if any) better, feeling frustrated, feeling off-balance in our lives ... feeling that life is passing us by.
And it may be, because we're waiting for the storm to pass, so we can start living.
And ... the storm doesn't pass. That's the point. Life is the storm, and if we wait for it to pass, we'll be huddled in the same doorway from now until the end of the world. Or at least until the end of our small slice of the world.
Balance doesn't come with waiting. Balance is active, not passive. Balance comes when we open our eyes and look around us, when we stop looking for what tomorrow may bring and start looking at what we have right here, right now.
Living in the moment. And no, it doesn't mean we don't plan for tomorrow. Seeds have to be planted in the spring if you want to harvest a crop in the fall. But it does mean that we stop putting our lives on hold. I once knew a woman who would take a two-week vacation every year in Hawaii, a total, no-holds-barred blowout. But to afford the trip, she would spend the rest of the year eating food she didn't like (because it was cheap), denying herself small pleasures, no movies, no new clothes, no special outings with friends.
Fifty weeks of denial for two weeks of pleasure.
But isn't that what so many of us do to ourselves every day? Waiting for the rain to pass, while we plan what we're going to do "tomorrow"? And we see the storm as huge and dark and ugly. We never notice the little things around us, how the rain splashes when it hits the sidewalk, the snaky path of lightning among the clouds, the way thunder rumbles like the very voice of God.
We need to open our eyes, and our minds, to what's happening around us.
We need to dance in the rain.

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