Afternoon brainstorm

"Hay que acceptar todo lo que hay en tu vida. La vida es la unica cosa que tenemos"
Accept everything in your life. Life is all we have.

At first, this sounded to me like pointless rhetoric, something a self-help book would have plastered across its title page, and then continue to harp on throughout its entirety. "Accept everything in your life" smacked of apathy to me, and it didn't sit well. What's the point of living, I thought, if I don't even take control of my own life? If I don't try to affect my surroundings? There is nothing to be had in resigning myself to all that is. When the John Mayer song "Waiting on the world to change," first saw airtime on the radio, I nearly crashed the car making incensed hand motions.

It's not that we don't care,
we just know that the fight ain't fair
so we keep on waiting,
waiting on the world to change

Fair is an ambiguous creature if ever I've met one. I learned shortly after turning six that "life isn't fair," after staking the fair flag smack dab in the contentious no-man's-land of a sibling tussle. It brought things to a screeching halt. I'd been taught what fair meant, and suddenly my balloon had popped. Sadly, what my mother said is true: life isn't fair, and therefore, neither is any fight. Which means that if John continues to wait for the other man to clean up his fisticuffs, he'll be waiting for a very long time.

I was feeling very righteous about all of this. My grassroots supporting, cause supporting, hipster music listening, self. In essence, the accepted profile of a moderately cool, 20 year old liberal with hopes of changing the world. And then a whisp of a thought took me by surprise. It could be, said the brain, that in order to do anything, you have to first recognize the situation. Could the silly mantra be instead a logical first step? Righteousness reared its freshly combed head. I beat it back with a handful of dirt to the face.

In order to solve an equation, you have to first analyze the problem. Peering at it, prodding it, looking for loop holes. Once you've taken it all in, accepted it for what it is, you're free to solve it.

The weak light wavering over my head burst its bulb, leaving a flair of new thought hanging in its place.
Step one: accept (recognize) things for what they are.
Step two: (And this is when decision and action start) Fight or let lie.

Dear Mommy,

Of all the sage advice that you've given me, these two have manifested themselves recently.
1. Sleeping on a regular basis bestows ability to think like some ancient fairy godmother,
2. even though life isn't fair.

Love,
Margaret