Number two to no one?

No one’s number two

It is inevitable that we cannot all be number one. In a culture where we give every kid a trophy for showing up and paying for the entry fee, everyone wins! Right? Wrong. Many of us grew up and tried out for sports or cheerleading and did not make the team. We were not chosen. And it’s a powerful lesson. We cannot always be someone’s first pick. It puts that horrible drop feeling in your stomach that for a second you think you're either gonna puke or never eat again. Maybe you cry, maybe you scream or maybe no change outwardly happens and life just moves on.

There are lessons in every time a door just in our face leaving the door knocker pressed up against our nose. Am I even at the right house? Or am I early or late to the address I thought I was supposed to be at? But the real point is, the door is closed. And there are other doors, windows,  even smokestacks and keyholes that may contain the avenue that you are meant to follow.

The path we are on and where we have ended up is a series of no’s, yes’s, half-ass choices and strong firm decisions. We cannot go back, Marty and Doc have yet to show up in the DeLorean offering any of us a chance at redemption. So we must make TODAY the one that counts. My neck would look like something from Exorcist if I tried to second guess and look back to every what if in my life.

If you're gonna be number two, it better be to someone awesome like Mother Nature or someone’s mother.  

The Humbling Nature of Failure...aka Growth

I have been a perfectionist, a pleaser since I can remember the happy feeling of making myself or someone else happy. That joy in your soul from happiness. From getting something right, completing a task, surprising someone with a balloon on their birthday, A's on a report card, being teacher's pet, a science report on solar panels-- it didn't matter. I wanted to make _____{fill in the Blank} happy.

I am not perfect by any means, I am overweight, I am a horrible housekeeper. The secret is I can shut off the perfectionism. But not completely, which is where the inner anxiety comes in. Thoughts or feeling come in my head caused by my failures or even sometimes things I have said or done when  I think I  did not live up to my expectation of what they should have been and this scene will loop until I can calm myself or meditate it away. This is my perfection, This is my anxiety. So I can clean to perfection and make my mind at ease or I can half-ass it and leave my mind to possible be exposed to the dreaded pressuring anxiety to be better.

There are larger scale things that we are expected to succeed in buying houses, marriage, career, having kids, etc. And what if you find yourself failing in one of these categories? How do you rebound? How do you stop and find the growth and feeling like for eighteen years you knew how to own a house or have a career but then poof? Failure. Or actual it's just perceived failure because all fails are actually a place to stop. Literally and take a breath and contemplate, Where am I ? Where Was I? Where do I want to be? How Can I get There? Because with the big stuff we rarely stop and reflect on our progress enough, do we?

But to know you failed, you the person who usually gets things right. The one people go to for answers about that thing. The person who at one time may have even criticized others who were in the position she now finds herself. It is humbling but it's the gift of growth. I am rarely wrong this big. To be wrong on a scale this big means for me to reevaluated on a scale of a real FBI investigation like Nixon years.  

Yet, I cannot ponder yesterday more than a moment in need for knowledge to mold decisions before reminding myself. That I have today. Tomorrow is not guaranteed.  I am happy today. My Failure has brought me back to me and I am happy. Now on to a new volume in Dany's life.