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Stuff Happens

Here’s a thought I’d like to share…

Stuff happens.  ~A simple truth

I have a cold and I don’t like it. My cold doesn’t care if I like it or not. It seems absolutely unaffected by my feelings toward it. I, however, am very affected by my dislike of this cold. I am grumpy and irritable, and feel sort of pitiful – all because I have invested in not liking something about which I can do nothing!

This cold is just a virus that happened to find my body a hospitable host. It is only doing what cold viruses do. It’s not personal.

People get colds. It happens. But I didn’t want it to happen to me!

Here is where my work begins. My fierce grip on my personal preference about whether or not I have a cold only serves to make me tighten up and suffer more (…and sniffle more and sigh more and grumble more).

This is a lesson I learned on an Olympic level when I had cancer. During that time, whenever I found myself hating my cancer, I very quickly remembered that it wasn’t what I wanted, but it was what I had. Somehow that helped. It helped me loosen my mental grip and relax my mind — and consequently my body — and accept what simply “was.”

So I could do it with cancer, but not with a cold???? Kind of makes me laugh to just write that. Looks like the lesson I learned eight years ago is getting a little refresher today!

Funny how the really big things in our lives give us perspective, even wisdom. But those irksome little things that come along can throw us for a loop!

Wishing you, and me, the ability to feel the freedom of accepting things as they are,

Namasté Augusta

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