Are we going to have a fabulous day today, or what? I jumped out of bed after an hour of listening to the radio, then overwatered the Sahara dry plant, got a towel, cleaned up the mess, put on my clothes to take out the garbage… and… I was too late. The truck had come and gone. Darrrrnnnnit! Wrong side of the damn bed again! All of that was the icing on the day previous, a ‘falling off’ day. The wagon’s wheels went soft and I fell off. None of the projects I had carefully lined up marched anywhere but to the couch. The TV overheated as the refrigerator emptied itself onto the bathroom scale and I refuse to look. OMG! This cannot keep happening!
I recognize the pattern I am ravelling now. This has happened before. All of my threads are making complexity come to life. There are too many things to think about at one time and nowhere to go first so I sit here, frozen in front of the mirror. My self is reflecting back to me. The mirror is not kind, not a supplicant like the evil Queen’s mirror, nor the sort of mirror that just gives up one day and tells the truth. The mirror in my hand always tells the truth. The truth about what a con man human being I am, what an unmotivated fool. But is that really so? Am I really more a conniver than any other soul? Do I really do less meaningful work? What is the truth? There could be other sides to this story. The old Libra scale has it’s balance intact yet and there are tomorrows to live through.
I am surrounded by half completed projects or I am surrounded by works in progress. I am old and fat and sloppy or I am healthy, with all of my medical test results in the very positive range. I am poor and scrambling to survive or I have plenty enough to live and a few luxuries to enjoy. No one wants to fall in love with me or I am too busy restarting my life and unable to commit anyway. The marriage and life I had has evaporated or I am on my way as an author, musician and poet, surrounded by new friends. The lovely woman I grew to deeply care for, whose company I enjoyed, has gone or I helped make her last years pleasant and cheerful. The parents I never felt close to have died or I am orphaned and alone at 70. Interesting.
Every day, the same quandary. Inertia of living tells me that a person probably should get out of bed, eventually. There are two sides of the bed to choose between. There is a wrong side and a right side exit to the same little warm, safe place. I wonder. When you do roll out, is it choice or chance that determines which exit you take? In my mind of superstitious nature, I take chance to be the work of God and choice to be the work of me, of you. It is chance that powers the day and choice turns it the right way. Chance blows in with a dark cloud or two and a bit of rain. Choice closes the window so I don’t get wet. Chance overflows the clay pot and spills onto the good wood table what choice brought too much of from the kitchen sink. Chance turns your head at a crucial moment and choice keeps you from shouting out when the door frame cracks your skull.
This, friends is how I see God: as chance. as chaos. as opportunity offered. It isn’t really a plan. There is no grand design. There is no right or wrong or good or bad — it is all good — it is all right — IT, is perfect. Chance spins the day as if it were a roulette wheel. Wherever the ball stops is the right place. That is God. God is what affords us opportunity to see, to do, to gain, to turn the story around. We win, we lose, we try, we fail. God didn’t plan any of that. He isn’t punishing us. He doesn’t reward. He or, more accurately, It offers us opportunity. On any one of those given days where a series of upside down events occurs, I am forced to stop. I am forced to pause and take a breath. I am led to reflect. That’s what God offers us, a moment of choice, an opportunity to change our view, a thing to reflect on. If we choose badly, that’s our result. If we choose well, that’s our result. Any glass is half a glass and the direction is what choice sees. Full? Empty?
Who picks the side of the bed you rise from? Haha. Like most people, I get up on the same side every day. It’s habit. ‘Getting up on the wrong side of the bed’ is a way to describe whether a day is going in a positive or negative direction but I actually always get up on the same side. I get up on the right side of the bed. All of us do, we get up on our own right side of the bed. Even in China, all that way toward the opposite end of earth from me, they get up on the right side of the bed. In Australia, the drain whirlpool flows in the opposite direction but the folks get up on the right side of the bed. You can’t get out of a bed any way except from the right side. How the day goes, is how the day goes. It’s our choice to laugh or to curse. Up to us. It isn’t more serious than that. God offers the day, the life-force, the chance encounter, the flow, the spin. It’s my choice to see how perfect it is and be content or my choice to grieve. Either way, “The main thing is: to not get too ex-cited.”
Robert On The Air 