The Hard Lessons

I remember feeling moral outrage when I first heard the notion of fostering gratitude for the hard and unpleasant lessons in life. Off to the Toxic People Landfill with you, rationalizing fool!!! There is no room for you in my delusions of Non-toxic perfection! It seems I was a teenager then, but I really don't remember with any degree of clarity.

I have vivid recall of the first time the notion looked worthy of consideration. It was 20 years ago during the after-meeting session at an AA/Alanon center. I never learned the man's name or whether he was AA or Alanon, but he was just coming down from an out-of-control rage which had lead him through a series of self-made disasters. Rage does such. . . The last of the disasters was a flat tire on his motorcycle. He had been reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence" and had begun reflecting on the lessons he could learn from the chaos of the raging day as he dealt with the tire fiasco. My own domestic chaos was waiting for me at home and I ached for a dose of the serenity emminating from his battered soul. The hard shell of my moral indignation cracked open and the seed germinated.

The scene has replayed often during the processing the still unconfirmed possibility that the contractor has taken my money and run, especially during the moments when I have felt my creative name-calling/judgemental urges.

Chewing. . .