someone in the room is farting

I’m getting my shit together. Actually, it’s pretty much kind of mostly sometimes not really at all totally together.

For the most part, I’m happy. I’m wired this way. Wired for hope, optimism and positive thinking. I’m also wired for absurdity. I’m silly, highly sensitive, emotional, intuitive, and funny - at least I think so, very anxious and fearful. Overall, I think I am doing a pretty mediocre/fair to middling (I googled “middling” to make sure the spelling was correct) - to decent job at being human. 

I err on the side of connection like author, Elizabeth Lesser tells me to. And like Anne Lamott, I too, believe that “laughter is carbonated holiness.” I try my best to be kind, forgiving, and accepting. 

Most of the time. 

I am actively practicing allowing people to be as they are without wanting them to change. Ram Dass writes, “You look at the tree and allow it. I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.” 

But I want them to change.

Because people piss me off. Repeatedly. I don’t like the way most of them drive. Especially when they don’t let pedestrians or bikers cross at designated crosswalks. 

I try to be good but I’m human which means I am not all that great a lot of the time and that mostly I’m a mess. I laughed my arse off last night when my brother’s guess at a picture my son drew in a Pictionary like game was “a dirty mess.” 

Surprise! We’re all dirty messes. I’m deeply flawed. And so are you. I stay stupid, offensive, and nonsensical things. I embarrass myself and others. A lot.

And sometimes I talk about people behind their backs. My therapist reminds me this is normal and that I’m not Mother Theresa. Again, I’m trying to do better. And part of doing better is not “beating myself up” or “kicking myself”, “taking myself too seriously” or saying, “I’m so mad at myself.”

I don’t always give people the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes people just annoy me for no reason other than the expression on their face. This is not evolved or enlightened, I’m just being honest. 

I’m working on it. But I want everyone to be friendly, is that so wrong? Oops, I already forgot that I’m trying for allowing and accepting. The only person I can change is myself. Am I right? (I hate am I right? Yet I say it all of the time so there’s that).

When people say, they have no fear or that they didn’t fart, I don’t believe them. Someone in the room is always farting. Remember that. And someone peed in the pool. Someone may have been me. But maybe not. I’m not telling. Fortunately, we have the red dot in the pool that follows you around so consider this a warning, kids! 

Everything that is keeping you up at night won’t matter one day. The fact that we are all going to die may seem morose. But it’s just a fact. It actually makes me feel better. If you have the propensity for over-thinking, a fine and terribly unhelpful quality I might add, remember this too. 

It’s fleeting. All of it. What is bothering you right now will pass. Is it really that big of a deal? Most likely, no. And sometimes, yes.

I fret. I dread. I worry. I wish I had thought of that or did it differently. But I didn’t. And now here I am. I sense a kid sitting on my shoulder with a baseball hat on backwards blowing a big pink bubble and saying in a Brooklyn accent of course, “So what are ya gonna do about it?”  

Well Kid, I’m gonna be nice to myself. “Huh?”, he may say back. “You heard me”, I reply. 

Self-compassion is the perfect antidote to an anxious mind. 

So I’ll keep talking to myself and kindly: You are trying sweet soul. Keep doing the best you can, girlfriend! Today you ate everything in sight and that’s okay, I hope the popcorn Nutella peanut butter extravaganza was delicious! 

I heard a comedian on NPR recently say that she is her own best friend and that she just tries to make herself laugh every day. 

And personally, I think that’s a great place to start.