The Exception to My Own Rules

It only took me an hour or so of waxing pathetic in a journal about my husband being on week 2 of a 3 week trip to India, then segueing seamlessly into my recent struggle with organized religion, to get to my assignment from Tonya, my new life coach. Ooh, it feels so weird saying that, “my new life coach.” She virtually fell into my life through Facebook, but it turns out she lives right down the road. Since, the only thing I know for sure about this blog, is that it’ a personal one, I’ll do double duty and blog about it.

When I started this blog, I was kind of hoping I could just be funny a few days a week. So much for that! After less than two months of blogging, all I still knew was that there was something going on with that irksome word, “short,” that I for some reason put in my blog’s title, Life in the Short Lane.

That’s all I grasped, until late the other night, when I was filling out some paperwork for my life coach.

The other night I jotted down my first unedited thoughts in response to the questions, on my most familiar topic: me. I admitted in barely legible scribble, one of my deepest secret beliefs:

I think if I was taller my life would be better. That’s not exactly how I put it, but that’s the gist..

Now, I don’t go around thinking about this, much less saying it, so please don’t feel compelled to tell me your height. I don’t get this stuff yet; it’s from deep down in my gut. I’m mildly embarrassed to be fessing it.

For years I have encouraged my women friends to see how amazing they are. I am adamant when I advise them to under no circumstances define themselves by ridiculous, culturally imposed standards such as jean size or any traditional measure of “success.” It hurts when I hear people I care about put themselves down and waste time engaged with the meaningless. I’ll muster any energy needed to shake them out of it; it makes me sad to think they don’t feel they are anything short of spectacular.

All bets are off, I discovered in recent history, when it comes to myself. A motley chorus makes a racket inside of me. Some voices sing I’m hopeless, others chirp of my being inexcusable and unworthy. I yell at them, “Shut up!.” I whisper, “We’re supposed to be on the same team.” Then I try to ignore them, hoping they”ll go away. Through some hard work, I have turned the volume on them way down, but like a least favorite radio station wafting uninvited through an open window they still can be remarkably annoying.

There is a Chinese proverb that says, “when the student is ready the teacher will appear.” So a teacher has appeared. Like a few other good things in my life right now, she works virtually. Check out her wisdom rich blog, Just B Living.

Now it is an hour later, and we’ve got less than one minute left in the Superbowl. It appears to be pretty exciting. My life does too. If I can manage to keep up with this, I’ll let you know how it turns out.