The day the world stopped spinning.
Saturday, 12 December, 2009, the world stopped spinning. For me at any rate.
There are those days that happen in each of our lives when through the experience of being a living, moderately normal human, we acknowledge that the daily progress of change has added a soupçon of challenge each day to our lives more than it had the day before, and that as those morsels of life challenges accrue, inertia and complacency are bestowed not just to our broad shoulders, but to our very souls as well.
If one has any ambition about them whatsoever then this realization only comes to us when all of our forward progress finally comes to a screeching halt over the least of trivialities and usually at a mission critical moment.
That moment when all forward progress stops is usually replaced by that first momentary sensation of regression – the feeling that somehow things are not just slowing down anymore but starting, in effect, to go backwards. And as the momentum builds in reverse we struggle and fight to regain control. Like a driver who has lost their power steering on an icy road, we fight, struggle and wrench the wheel in the earnest demand for supremacy and domination of our environment – we *will* bend it to our will. We will regain control of the car, and guide it safely forward and out of harms’ way once more.
Like the driver, sometimes we are successful and we regain control. We regain the momentum forward and continue on, having shaken loose some of the weighty issues that have led us into a dangerous driving situation. In other cases we lose control and through reaction or over-reaction we actually make things worse, endangering not only us but those who depend on us and those for whom we care.
And then in some very few cases we relinquish control and simply urge the car to come to a quiet rest, neither fighting for control nor recklessly throwing ourselves into a panic of pride and incompetence but rather gently observing the situation and resolving to act rationally when the first opportunity to make a difference becomes available.
A friend recently mentioned that wisdom is gained from experience; experience is gained through learning from errors; and errors occur from making choices. Wisdom, then, comes from making choices and learning from our errors. And one of the lessons is that although decisive action is critical to solving a tenacious and overwhelming problem, more important still is having the patience to make the right decision at the right *time*.
And so we revise our hypothesis and learn once more that the path to wisdom isn’t simply being a decider, nor is it simply observing life, but it is the considered timely action that yields the best results.
And so as the mass and inertia of accumulated challenges have sent my life spinning for several years now, I have observed closely. I have watched the dangers flash by: the dangers of economic instability, career jeopardy, family instability, political instability, and personal safety and well-being – all these and more have slid past me at warp speed, just as the car spins on the black ice.
I have resisted the urge to reach out to that steering wheel and yank it in the opposite direction; to fight the spin and force friction and my will to battle the wild inertia of a spin on treacherous terrain, and by that resistance I have bided, waiting for the right opportunity to act, preparing my response for the occasion when the car has faced the right direction once more and by carefully turning into and then out of the spin I can guide the car back onto the road and actually use the momentum to regain control and guide my car and person safely on my way once more.
I redirected the stress from the challenges I bear to the stress of patience, and in so doing was able to see the stresses of my cares more clearly for what they truly are - the accumulation of thousands of days of cares, worries and frets belonging to choices that have long since passed added together with the worries , fears and hopes of today.
Those past issues were playing far too big a role in defining and directing my reactions to what is facing me now, and like with the driver, they represented distractions and pot holes that could easily tip the balance from a safe recovery to a dangerous crash. Patience allowed me to avoid taking the wrong reaction and still act in a timely manner to steer my life away from the dangerous, risky habit of trying to control for control's sake and allowed me the space to breathe and calmly guide my life to safety and return to forward progress.
By following that fundamental premise of considered timely action, the spinning has stopped and safety and control have been regained. The world stopped spinning for me on Saturday.
I'm still shaken up, worried and concerned that I carried all that extra baggage with me, but now I have a chance to deliver on my promises, achieve my objectives and I no longer have that overwhelming level of stress inhibiting my ability to live the way I want to.
All because the spinning stopped.
