Life’s Interruption

I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’ve had more than my fair share of unplanned interruptions over the last few months. The most recent being a huge blizzard that pretty much closed down a Washington D.C. and kept my four kids home from school for the best part of two weeks. While that might be my kid’s dreams come true, I have to admit that as much as I love my kids, it sure wasn’t mine.

And I’m guessing that as you read this, something comes to mind that has caused you disappointment, sadness or frustration over recent times. Something that you wished hadn’t happened but had no, or little, control over; something that disrupted the flow of your life. Of course the problem isn’t that things happen in life that throw us off our game, derail our plans and dash our hopes; it is that we expect anything otherwise. Problems are never the problem; rather it’s our perspective that brings us all the grief.

What I’ve come to learn over the years is that life is too unpredictable, too complex, too fragile and far too uncontrollable to ever expect that we can have things all unfold the way we would like them to. Life just doesn’t work like that. As the saying goes,Life is what happens while you are making other plans.

It is when life does not unfold as we want that we face the profound choice of how we will respond to our new reality. Just as I could have cursed the snow that kept my kids home from school for what felt like weeks on end (though it was only 10 days), so too we can curse the gods that brought illness and disappointment, suffering and sorrow, hardship and tragedy,into our lives. Or we can throw our arms out wide to the experience; we can look for the meaning, receive the lesson andaccept the challenge to grow in our capacity for life that they bring.

The English poet Samuel Johnson wrote,Men are wise in proportion notto theirexperience but to their capacity for experience. Who knows why bad things happen to good people, why some people seem to be faced with so much more suffering and misfortune than others, why opportunity and prosperity fall into the laps of some yet eludethe diligent efforts of others. I certainly don’t. What I do know though is that each of us are here to experience life to its fullest, to come to know our capacity forall of lifeits excitement and disappointment, its joy and its rawness, its love and its lossand, in doing so, to touch the lives of those around us by the grace and courage in which we live our own.

It all comes down to the day-by-day, hour-by-hour and often even moment- by-moment choices you make that determine your success (however you choose to define it). It’s taken me many years to realize that there is no point arguing with reality. That everything however random or unwanted happens for a reason and that if life were perfect, it wouldn’t be. After all, mastery of life is not the absence of disruptions or problems, it is mastery of them.

Wherever this finds you right now, whatever interruptions threaten to disruptthe normal (if there is anormal) flow of your life, Iencourage you to invite them in with grace, with self-trust and with a spirit of curiosity for the gifts they hold. It is those interruptions unwanted, inconvenient and uncomfortable as they may be -that ultimately expands your capacity for life and enrichyour experience of it the most. So back to the question posed in the title of this article are you making the most of the interruptions to your life?

About the Author

Margie Warrell is an expert on living with greater confidence and courage. Get YOUR treasure chest of free resources, including her LIVE BOLDLY! eNewsletter at http://www.margiewarrell.com.