By Emily Rosen
www.emilyrosen424.com
April seems to be the most competitive month of the year —racing as it does around the seasons only to reappear with increased frequency, thus presenting me with yet another birthday. Again? So soon?
With that in mind, I’ve had another year of learning what many people of fewer birthdays are yet to figure out, which makes me Lucky Emily. I am happy to share this good stuff with you people of fewer birthdays, although, trust me, it sticks better when you figure it out for yourself. But here are some basics that may save you some time.
PEOPLE IN OUR LIVES (relatives, friends, colleagues, customers. authority figures) There are no perfect people, although rumor has it that Jesus was such, and I am willing to bow to that one exception. Regarding the people most important in our lives it’s kind of fun to 1) calculate their areas of “good” and “bad” and then to 2) determine the balance and then to 3) decide if the balance is favorable to maintaining the relationship (and if it is not, figure out how to chuck it), and then 4) train ourselves to be accepting of the “bad” while still exuding good cheer and inner peace—“good cheer” and “inner peace” being the operative words here. And BTW—if you’re thinking you can “change” the bad part, you need lots more b i r t h d a y s .
PEOPLE ON OUTER PERIMETER OF OUR LIVES: Was there ever a time in all of the history of recorded mankind when some people somewhere were NOT trying to kill each other? Never, never, never. Somewhere in human DNA there is a gene for the kind of competitive megalomania that results in a need for control and ultimate power, often leading to violence. Short of identifying that gene routinely at birth and subsequently enucleated it in much the same way we inoculate babies against diseases, it’s been a raging fact of life forever that has yet to be subdued. So, after many years, it is possible to accept that we are saddled forever with an imperfect world. And we note with resignation the ying and yang, of rain and shine, of war and compassion, of good and evil, of plenty and famine, of wealth and poverty. And we pick a tiny segment of our own tiny world to work toward making some part of it better. It took many birthdays to recognize and accept that I cannot save the world, that I cannot fix everything.
What I have learned most is gratitude and good cheer, to keep my pains and aches to myself and to ignore them in deference to all the distractions I can muster…distractions that include in equal weight… concentration on the needs of others and concentration on my own needs.
So Happy April to me and, before I know it, I’ll have another litany of stuff I’ve learned for 2014.
