Oh Life, It's Bigger...

One of my favorite songs, "Losing My Religion."

So, this inquiry has taken me to another reflection. I think about my life, my adult life, post the childhood tsouris, and what I remember experiencing is some good times, and some really good times, and then some real crashes. As an example, I'd be doing some really good work, interesting and engaging and contributing, and then a series of minor or not so minor breakdowns. It's almost like driving just fine for a number of years and then having three or four fender benders or worse in a couple of months.

Sometimes it got so that I would wonder when the other shoe would drop. And when it did drop, how complicit was I in the crash?

This is different than the things I know I made mistakes about, mistakes I made out of haste or doing something for convenience, or thinking I could get away with something that was certain to catch up with me. This is stuff that seemed like the bad times lottery--that just happened.

Yeah, I know stuff doesn't "just happen." One of my favorite books in recent years is Jerry Harvey's "How Come When I get Stabbed in the Back My Fingerprints are Always on the Knife?" That's about as vivid a title as I've ever seen. Aptly descriptive of the idea that even when it seems like the universe is handing you a trial, that if you look closely enough, something you did had something to do with it. And it's not blame or fault.

So I guess there are two questions for me to deal with here. The first is what about this makes me any different than anyone else? I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who experiences this. But I suppose it could be that not everyone experiences it. The second and related question is whether I let this affect me differently than others let it affect them? Do I respond to it differently? Could my operative injunction--the "act" I have been digging at--be part of this?

Time to sit in the questions a bit.