CURRENT EVENTS
Gratitude is the bulldozer that levels the mountain that once was a molehill.
I love charts that identify the various parts of your brain. Love knowing I have all that fabulous equipment up there between the ears. Factory equipped. I came that way. Some charts even attempt to explain what does what.
I’m not sure which part does the things that get the most unwanted attention from me. That nasty little voice whose only job is to scare the crap out of us. I don’t think anyone knows where that gremlin resides. I’m talking about the part of the head that speaks to you in the middle of the night. That “Doom and Gloom R Us” advertisement that predicts a totally unreasonable, disastrous future.
My friend Wes Hamil has the perfect phrase to describe the event. He says, “The rats are chewing on the wires!” Love that. It’s an apt description for the fear based thinking I usually avoid these days. I’m a healthier guy than I’ve ever been in most ways. And my spiritual life is front and center these days. Not an afterthought. Hey, Tracey and I are writing a book called “Gratitude and Trust” for heavens sake. We are joyously in process. Happily having had a spiritual awakening
And yet ..
And yet, every now and then, in the middle of the night that voice begins to hiss and whisper. And it’s never a message I want to hear. It’s the whining of an unwanted resident, renting space in my head and I want him out of there.
Give me real problems I can solve. Not the fiction of a personal and private boogie man.
In the real world things aren’t always a walk in the park. I feel the changing energy cycles. Some days you jump out of bed and find you can do no wrong. The message from the universe is ‘It’s your world. Do with it as you will’. A high energy, harmonic convergence that translates into shorter lines at the store, parking spaces everywhere and the first outfit you put on being the right one.
And then there are days when there’s “cat hair on everything!” Again, my friend Wes. He has a way with words. Spilled coffee on important papers, missed appointments, a day when your phone and car keys decide it’s time to disappear. There’s nothing like that little shadow of terror that says, “You’ve lost your phone”. Finding it at the bottom of your purse or in the pocket of last nights jeans feels like winning the lottery doesn’t it?
I try to remind myself that I’m experiencing “Current Events.” And I don’t mean the evening news. I’m talking about that energy current that seems to run through some days and nights; when the energy is good and everything’s easy life is effortless. We ride the current, stay positive and enjoy the constructive flow. When things are difficult the challenge is to remain positive, calm and remember that swimming against the tide is exhausting. Pointless. And sometimes dangerous.
Memory saves me much of the time. I remember the many times I was unable to accomplish something because I was fighting that negative energy. And I remember how often things tend to work out for the best. Yes, I found there was a gift in the struggle. That the thing I was trying to do didn’t serve me or anyone else and that there was an alternative option I was swept towards that was better.
Better. Better. We love better. The magical thinking part of the Paulie brain is immediately comforted by this news. I keep it close by in the memory banks and when the midnight marauder starts threatening my peace of mind I tell him to go away. Give it a rest. I’m not a little boy you can scare with your lies anymore. The universe isn’t really interested in watching me starve or die broke and alone. There’s a much better time ahead for all of us when we can let go of the fear, move into that place where we know we’re doing just fine thanks and slowly build a life that sails along on the sweet currents of Gratitude and Trust.
Paul Williams is a singer, songwriter, actor, recovery advocate and has been a fixture on the American cultural scene since the seventies. His book Gratitude and Trust is now available.