Be Grateful it Didn’t Work Out

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Abstract

he shrapnel hitting our vulnerable and exposed bits any place it can.One example was the end of my “being a French professor” dream. I wanted so badly to become a French professor and teach in the small liberal arts college that I’d attended, and got so far as to start a PhD program. I was so close! And then, by my own hand, I decided to leave the program for reasons I’m still not sure I can adequately articulate today. Mostly your typical, run-of-the-mill, imposter syndrome/fear of not being good or deserving enough/getting so close to finally achieving your dream and freaking out type of stuff, but the despair and sadness ran soul deep on this one and I was adrift for quite a while afterwards. Of course now, I can look back and be grateful because girlfriend is not the kind of personality to sit in some stuffy academic department with a bunch of overly-intellectual, socially-stunted types who spent their entire lives researching an obscure poet from the Moyen Age where everyone spoke in Old French, and — yes, you’re asking the right question — does it even matter that anyone can read/speak Old French? To which you can only answer, Fuck no!! It doesn’t matter at’all!! We speak modern-day French, dingleberry! Because I, like all good French graduate students do, bought the modern version of the book so we could understand what exactly the fuck was going on!! OK, OK, I digress…Fast forward many years from this example, and I may be — OK, I totally am — up against another one of these rare occasions of something not work

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ing out that I really wanted to. En plus, I had a defining moment this week that showed me it’s time to go. Because I’m a lot more aware, both of self and surroundings than I was in Example 1 above, I’ve seen many warning signs happen over the past 6 months or so that clued me into the fact that what I’d originally based my thinking and my decision on are simply not there anymore. Lots of change, lots of ambiguity, lots of resistance, lots of yucky reactions all around. It’s hard to see happen, and even harder for me to see something I’ve invested so much of my time, energy, and effort into go into a tailspin, in spite of knowing it didn’t have to be that way. And yet it is, so maybe it just did.At this point in my life, I know that is it not my job to step in front of a speeding, out-of-control train in an attempt to save…what? Certainly not it. It’s a speeding, out-of-control train. I’m not going to save myself. I’m ending the week marginally better than the beginning, where I was horizontal for two days, with a fever, no appetite, chills and sweats, my energy and health finally spent by getting dangerously close to the edge of that speeding train. Thankfully, I remembered that the train station was a great place for getting food, going pottie, checking my master schedule, spending some time with a good book and reflecting on how grand life can really be, especially if we allow ourselves to be grateful for what didn’t happen, and trust that something amazing is on its way to us, even if we can’t see it quite yet.</article></body>

Be Grateful it Didn’t Work Out

“Be grateful that certain things didn’t work out. Sometimes you don’t even know what you’re being protected from or where you’re being guided to in the midst of chaos. That’s why you just have to trust that greater things are aligning for you. Let go gracefully.”

I really don’t like it when things I want to work out…don’t work out.

I’m a planner by nature, so if I get to the point of something working out, chances are it’s going to. Of course, there have been exceptions to this, but I rationalized it by downplaying them, telling myself it/they didn’t really matter, whatever will be, will be, etc.

There has been the very rare occasion where something I deeply wanted to work out, didn’t. And no amount of downplaying or telling myself it didn’t matter worked. Because I’d wanted it to happen so much, felt it deep in my soul, and believed with everything it would, and it just fucking didn’t. Which is still a function of how we can learn from our experiences and how little in control we really are of things outside ourselves, but please, all. That sounds like a bunch of airy-fairy bullshit when the disappointment and devastation is hitting us full-on in the face and we are doing all we can to reach ourselves around it and see something, anything, that is working, in spite of the shrapnel hitting our vulnerable and exposed bits any place it can.

One example was the end of my “being a French professor” dream. I wanted so badly to become a French professor and teach in the small liberal arts college that I’d attended, and got so far as to start a PhD program. I was so close! And then, by my own hand, I decided to leave the program for reasons I’m still not sure I can adequately articulate today. Mostly your typical, run-of-the-mill, imposter syndrome/fear of not being good or deserving enough/getting so close to finally achieving your dream and freaking out type of stuff, but the despair and sadness ran soul deep on this one and I was adrift for quite a while afterwards. Of course now, I can look back and be grateful because girlfriend is not the kind of personality to sit in some stuffy academic department with a bunch of overly-intellectual, socially-stunted types who spent their entire lives researching an obscure poet from the Moyen Age where everyone spoke in Old French, and — yes, you’re asking the right question — does it even matter that anyone can read/speak Old French? To which you can only answer, Fuck no!! It doesn’t matter at’all!! We speak modern-day French, dingleberry! Because I, like all good French graduate students do, bought the modern version of the book so we could understand what exactly the fuck was going on!! OK, OK, I digress…

Fast forward many years from this example, and I may be — OK, I totally am — up against another one of these rare occasions of something not working out that I really wanted to. En plus, I had a defining moment this week that showed me it’s time to go. Because I’m a lot more aware, both of self and surroundings than I was in Example 1 above, I’ve seen many warning signs happen over the past 6 months or so that clued me into the fact that what I’d originally based my thinking and my decision on are simply not there anymore. Lots of change, lots of ambiguity, lots of resistance, lots of yucky reactions all around. It’s hard to see happen, and even harder for me to see something I’ve invested so much of my time, energy, and effort into go into a tailspin, in spite of knowing it didn’t have to be that way. And yet it is, so maybe it just did.

At this point in my life, I know that is it not my job to step in front of a speeding, out-of-control train in an attempt to save…what? Certainly not it. It’s a speeding, out-of-control train. I’m not going to save myself. I’m ending the week marginally better than the beginning, where I was horizontal for two days, with a fever, no appetite, chills and sweats, my energy and health finally spent by getting dangerously close to the edge of that speeding train. Thankfully, I remembered that the train station was a great place for getting food, going pottie, checking my master schedule, spending some time with a good book and reflecting on how grand life can really be, especially if we allow ourselves to be grateful for what didn’t happen, and trust that something amazing is on its way to us, even if we can’t see it quite yet.