It's natural to feel trapped sometimes. The mind slides into a certain level of comfort and then starts seeking out the boundaries where it ends. It might be that a person is used to coming home right after work, and finds himself in a job that requires twenty hours of overtime for the foreseeable future. It might be that someone's child has always done well in school, and now is pulling a low grade in a class with a teacher who just seems to be out to get her for some reason. Or maybe a badly sprained ankle and a husband out of town on business have made caring for the kids nearly overwhelming.
Unmovable boundaries can drive a person right to the edge!
How about imagining if the fence was even tighter for a while? Recently I wrote about a game called "Would You Rather?" Here's a new spin on the game:
Would you rather have a job that works thirty hours of overtime, and for which you have no training?
Would you rather have a child with a dread disease and no hope of an education?
Would you rather be a single parent without legs?
Did you know that when slave ships crossed the ocean, the men and women were laid on their backs under an 18-inch high ceiling, in tightly compacted rows, in the cold dark, with the rats, and without sanitation or adequate food? That's trapped.
When the "woe-is-me"'s attack, when the grass seems greener on the other side of the fence, then it's time to pull the fence in for a while. In the "Mr. Positivity" experiment, those pangs hit me again this morning - negativity withdrawal perhaps? Fortunately there are plenty of remedies to take. I imagined what life would be like without a car, or the energy to stand for an hour or climb a flight of steps. I flipped on a comedy. I spent some time dreaming about some exciting things coming up in my life. And I sat down to visit with you.
Life is usually much more than we make of it.
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