A wee bit lighter...

Day 9 and I have to admit I feel... better.

Kinda like when you assess the stomach flu was horrendous but now your jeans fit again!...That kind of weird/wonderful tangle. A change in energy perhaps?

I don't feel as petulant. I have more space in my little brain to move about my day. How much of my day was taken up with this silliness? I wonder. I'm sure along the ride I have massively tanked in ways I can't count, letting the negative ship ferry along without me noticing. But I have tried. Lordy, lordy, have I tried.

I think I am laughing more. Yep. Lighter.

When we get caught up in something, whether it's the bloke who yells at us to move our car or the dirty look at the grocery store, we carry that around, wearing it like a shawl. Hashing and rehashing, being pissed and thinking of all the things you could have said, or, did say. Or in my case, three days later when I finally think of my fabulous comeback only to realize I am yelling it to the bathroom mirror. That'll teach 'em!

I have been oh so silly in this arena. At different points in my life I have gone from all sides of the spectrum- from raging to Mother Teresa. Mostly raging when my kids are not around and Mother Teresa when they are.

Annie certainly had this one down. She did a funny little dance with it though. How to explain her dead eyed aim at her libel cases? She was taking those newspapers down. I can only imagine she was saturated with anger and negativity at first; but in true Oakley style managed to turn it, hold it up to the light- and deal with it.  She wasn't taking any guff but she wasn't letting it consume her either. As I have said previously, she readily admitted that the talk swirling around her nearly killed her. But where she gets the glory is when she got back up on her proverbial horse and was so darn proactive about it--instead of ruminating, marinating, she got to work; not focusing on the negative talk but somehow gracefully, forcefully, rising above it. Maybe that's the balance...in sustaining the task of keeping negativity at bay, it can only be achieved if you roll with it.

I always think of Annie as in the world but not of it. So I beg the question: can we follow her lead and be able to dislike without getting personal?

Now you could have knocked me over with a feather telling me I would ever quote John McCain, especially from a time when he was wearing his "I'm going to be as nasty as I can" hat for the 2008 election; but here we are.  He said something really poignant that sticks with me to this day and may be the key to all of this...
He said; "Never get in a wrestling match with a pig, you both get dirty and the pig likes it."

If we are rolling in the mud of negativity can we see we are just as dripping filthy as the person who threw the first mudpie?
Better to roll out of the pen, take to the road and see where it leads you.

To a lighter place I imagine.