Post 33: Temporary

One thing I realize...

One thing I've come to know is true:

Everything is temporary.

EVERYTHING!

Every thought, every feeling, every situation, every event, every life...

It's all temporary.

That's a huge statement. Huge.

But you know when it was that I realized that everything is temporary?

When I was in school. It took me 12 years to get all my degrees. I started college when I was 16 and I didn't finish until the age of 28. Twelve long years. And that doctorate mess was the worst. Man, we thought we thought it was the end of the world! That was some craziness.

But you know what?

It's all over.

It was TEMPORARY.

I finished school eleven and a half years ago.

It. is. over.

It was merely a temporary situation.

I started it, went through it, and finished. Period.

Now, this is my opinion. Really it is. But for me, it rings true.

And I understood one thing, and I see it in a lot of people, including myself:

When I'm upset about something that happens, I am usually upset because I am reacting to the whole thing being permanent.

Like with any break-up I've had. Just looking back, I'm upset because we broke up, it's over, and I'll never meet another man, blah, blah, blah...

And we know that ain't true. It was a temporary situation, and life moves on. I'll meet new men and do new things. Thank goodness I'm out of that bad temporary situation.

I think like that now. But not in the past. I've learned not to get over into panic.

Panic is groundless fear. Fear with no real basis.

I know I react more to the harsh pictures I build in my mind about stuff, moreso than to the situation.

The situation is temporary. Always.

A different way of thinking, I know. Oh well. I'm a different kind of Oldgirl.

But I heard something a good 10 years ago that has stuck with me.

One of the assistant pastors at my New Orleans church was speaking on the subject of perserverance.

And he said some things that I know all women can relate to:

"Ladies, when you go get your hair done, it look all nice and all."
He had all our attentions then. We know about going to the hair salon.
"But you can't go just once. You have to go every six weeks, sometimes every month."
He got a lot of head nods on that one.
"That's because that hairdo is temporary. And you need to understand that about any situation you're going through right now. It's temporary. Just like a hairdo."

That was a light bulb moment for me.

Everything is temporary, like a hairdo. If I think of things like that, I can become more solution-minded versus being out all up in arms over the problem. Every problem has some solution.

Everything is temporary. Even our lives.

We are born. We live. We die. Period.

Morbid way of looking at things, but it is what it is: temporary.

But as I said, my thinking changed for the better when I thought like this, especially in situation that seem hopeless.

No it's not hopelss, only temporary. And I can and will get through it.

A lesson learned indeed.

One that I'll take into my 40th year. One I'll remember for the rest of my days.