owlolive

The Universe VS. You (and Doris Day)

I usually don’t share stories of a personal nature on the blog. I have my reasons which include keeping my privacy intact and enjoying the freedom and the courage which anonymity grants me, but I also don’t share a lot of personal stuff because, well, nothing really happens to me.

As with most people, my life is a very day-in-day-out kind of life. And that’s what I like. I like waking up, foreseeing how my day’s plans are going to unfold, and then watching them do so. Exactly as I always knew they would. On most days, I’m not entirely ecstatic with my life nor am I consistently downtrodden about everything. Most days, I’m a quiet, subtle optimist. Most days, I float somewhere within a happy middle between unbridled glee and bottomless sorrow: I’m content and upbeat about what I’ve got and what I’m hoping to get.

But today was not most days.

See, today I woke up with a smile on my face. For whatever reason, I just found myself stepping out of bed with an oddly fulfilling warmth in the pit of my stomach. I was happy to be awake and even happier to go out and ‘carpe diem‘ the hell out of the day.

I was walking on sunshine; with a pip in my step; and, as Ol’ Blue Eyes would have it, had “the world on a string.”

This is why I cannot help but marvel at the sheer level of extreme downturn that my day took as it progressed. And, really, its not that I just had another bad day. Everyone has those and I certainly don’t have any special reason to whine about the fact that my day was, on an average global scale, kinda sucky.

But as a former believer in the very hippy-dippy, Zen mantra of letting your positivity draw good things to you (and, no, I have not read “The Secret”), today the universe has done all that it can to reveal to me this overused, Yoga-inspired line for exactly what it is:

A Pack-O’-Lies.

No matter how many rainbows I had shining out of my freaking pores and how deeply determined I was to keep them shining despite of all the road bumps, the universe was just that much more determined to kick me in the butt every single time and prove to me that, when it comes down to it, your positivity can’t really save you.

In the course of today, The Universe (capital letters and all) has soundly schooled me and my naive, positive outlook in the following ways:

• Two minor collisions to my brand new car (both of which came out of nowhere and were not of my doing).
• Spent several hours in a police station with what I am convinced was a mildly intoxicated, belligerent bull disguised as a man.
• Had a huge, blood-pressure soaring fight with my best friend (which was blown so out of proportion you could probably hear it from space).
• Received news which was ever so slightly devastating.
• Had an extra 700 KD cashed on my credit card all of a sudden (this was only remedied after many long hours on the phone)
• Could not find the right brand of baby wipes even after scouring every Co-op and Sultan Center within my human reach.
• And, finally, bruised myself in the one place where no one on Earth ever bruises: my elbow.

You can probably imagine that, by the end of the day, I was not only low on positivity, but I was also pretty much low on oxygen and perhaps some valuable muscle mass as well. Seriously, trying to reassert a positive, ‘c’est la vie‘ attitude on the day despite all those cosmic blows telling you to just give up already is hard work.

The amount of times that I just wanted to curl myself into a fetal position and hide away from the entire world today is too much to mention. But, still, I strapped on my big girl shoes and tried my very best to see the silver lining in an attempt to draw a few happy, shiny, positive ions in my general direction.

Of course, I failed. Miserably. When it came to actually harnessing the power of my happiness (or my potential for it), I didn’t come up with squat. Try as I might, the universe was hellbent on making sure that I did not enjoy this day.

But you know what I did win? A thicker skin. I mean, hell, even despite the fact that my attempts have sorely failed at putting a positive spin on what was clearly a horrible, horrible day, I still survived it without completely breaking down and renouncing human existence for the mortal coil that it is. Sure I had my moments when I pretty much had lava pouring out of my eyes, but still, by the end of the day I was relatively unscathed.

Even as I write this post I’m winning back some power over the big, bad universe. Because even when I know that, in reality, no amount of goodwill is ever going to guarantee any measure of actual happiness, I don’t care. Even despite that knowledge and despite those heavy knocks I’ve gotten throughout the day, I’m not depressed or angry or pessimistic.

Instead, I am all about Doris Day in her perky blonde bob, perfectly pressed dress, and pearly white smile, casually repeating the phrase, “que sera, sera.“

Whatever will be, will be.

All my love!