Life - It Ain't Personal

I have had this title in my head for some days now. I was not sure how I should approach it. I wondered if I should write a preachy piece discussing all of the things we all already know, or should I meditate on the title until a higher, deeper truth is revealed? Naturally, I will do neither as well as a bit of both.

Everyone has been at a junction point in life and looking ahead. If you are smart the path ahead will look like a bright shining yellow brick road. If you dare to turn back and look over your shoulder, you have decided to trade tomorrow for yesterday. Not a good deal, yesterday is dead and tomorrow is yet to be born.

The way I see it, life is not personal, unless you allow it to be. Life is not out to get us, more times than not, we are the ones getting ourselves. The only thing personal about life and it's vicissitudes, is our ability to deal with it.

I have a friend that likes to yell at traffic lights and take umbrage at the weather. He takes everything personally, and he's angry more times than not. I have decided that he likes being that way and therefore he choose to see things through the “the world is out to get me” lens. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. Authored by him, directed at him, for his discomfort and disgust and apparently that is the way he likes it.

Me, I'm different, I don't see things as being personal, I like to see things for what that are or appear to be. It is what it it, is what I like to say. Sometimes this may offend me or leave me bewildered, but I never take it personally. Life to me is not personal.

How we deal with things tends to be more important than what happens to us. If things get to you and get under your skin, you will be agitated and irritated and be hard pressed to find any joy or peace.

Bad things happen all the time. Cars break down, computers crash, keys are lost, the weather gets miserable and people do things that we don't like, but it's not personal. It's the way things are and we can either get into the mind set of searching for reasons and avenues of understanding what happened and why, but that rarely leads anywhere. Or we can take note and move forward.

They say that a person without goals is like a rudderless ship, adrift at sea, never entering a port, never arriving at a destination. I think that is true. Although goals are personal, the result of not having them is not. It will affect you just like it will affect me.

Some of us allow circumstances to dictate what we do and how we do it. I believe the wiser way is to dictate the circumstances by positively projecting where we want to be. The power of positive projection is one of the most powerful tools we have during our time on Earth. We can see where we want to be and by focusing on that, the plans to arrive there are often not far behind.

So I say don't take it personally, I don't. What ever it is that you are dealing with, the only personal aspect of it is, how you deal with it.

There you have it, a bit preachy and not just knee deep.

What do you think?