The Good and Bad of it All

Wednesday night was a great night to go to Panera’s. The first 3 days of the work week had taken their toll. So, off we went. We turn on to the six-lane highway leading to our destination but it’s only a 45 mile-an hour speed limit — not so bad for Atlanta. Not far down the road a young woman pulls out from a side street, gliding through her stop sign, apparently not noticing or caring that if we were one second closer, we would have hit her broadside. I turn and look at her, she smiles in her periwinkle convertible, flips the hair off her shoulder, and smiles at me. Really? We soon turn into the shopping center and wind around to the restaurant. A woman on her phone does not glide through her stop sign, she dismisses it altogether. Again, no awareness. And so it goes. Most things we are looking forward to have obstacles along the way. The sheer love and joy of holding that soft-skinned, cuddly newborn brings unbelievable fatigue from sleepless nights; the new job that we’ve worked so hard for and will enable us to go beyond pizza for a night out, has stress and expectations; the beautiful new home gets a leaky roof or a backed up sewer line. Most of life is fraught with positives and negatives. We have to choose how much power we’ll give those things that get in our way. A familiar saying, if we focus on what we have we’ll always be grateful. If we focus on the negative, we’ll never have enough. Don’t let the yucky stuff ruin your day today!