Strange How the Universe Works…

~ This post was written in two sections, over a month apart.  The first part was written first (makes sense, right?) and is in italics to separate both the narrative and the intent.  ~

Strange how the universe works.  We live a life of circles, many of them small and all encompassing.  Some, wide ranging.  We may never see the borders of some circles in our lives, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. 

I sat down to write yesterday afternoon with absolutely nothing to say.  But write I must.  So, I will sat typed until the prose emerged or at least until it was time to get dinner started. 

I’d had a day of highs and lows.  But it was the lows that kept my mind occupied.  Occupied still, and I fight to keep positive as I know what troubles me is minor and insignificant in the proverbial grand scheme.   But still I can’t shake that feeling.  You know the one, where you had expectations something would go one way and they didn’t?  Not to say they went bad, they just didn’t live up to your expectation.  And if it isn’t one thing, it’s another.  If anything can go wrong, it will. 

So there, I had stumbled on something to think about.  Murphy’s Law.  I don’t know when I first learned of this broad stroke life lesson, but to be sure it was as a child.  The term was coined before my time, the connotation before that.  Needless to say, as long as things have been going wrong in the world someone has been there to say something about it.

In doing a little research on the phrase itself, I discovered an example given in Wikipedia (not my only source, but one nonetheless) that used the meaning of the phrase and attributed it to author John Sack in his non-fiction account of the first summit of a mountain in the Peruvian Andes nicknamed “The Butcher”.   Sack accredited the term to “an old mountaineering adage.”

The mountains.  In my self induced despair, I tripped through the fog of my own thoughts and misgivings about my day and unknowingly wandered back into the mountains.  A full circle.  Turns out that I also learned a little bit about a man I had never heard of (John Sack) and a mountain I’ll probably never see (Yerupaja).  Both very interesting.

I wrote the above some time ago, and for some reason I kept it.  I guess it was the intrigue of my opening statement.  I’m not sure.  It’s obvious that it’s unfinished, right?  I left it raw and unedited, just as I found it.  I guess this was simply a day when I needed to “journal” and did so on the computer.  Many times I’ll journal in a notebook.

One thing struck me as odd today when I read the above that I apparently didn’t give credit to when I originally wrote the post.  It is full of negativity or at least that is how I perceive it today.  And to be honest, I don’t remember what it was that I had expectations for that didn’t get met.

As I reread the post, I can’t help but think journaling my feelings down helped to get the negativity out of my system so that I could move on to other, more positive things.  I hope that was the case anyway.  I truly believe we need to make a conscious effort to stay positive, even when the odds are stacked against us.  In fact, even more so when the odds are stacked against us.  This has been a lesson I’ve learned, a sermon I’ve practiced and on occasion, a discipline I’ve failed.  I think the constant reminders are important too.

I have decided on a new mountaineering adage ~ “If something can go right, it will.”  I’ll call it Morton’s Law of Inscience.  There are an infinite number of possibilities in our world.  There are as many in our own lives.  At least one of these infinite possibilities has to go correctly or “right” in order for us to have the opportunity to appreciate another day.  We might not observe them, but they are there nonetheless.  Though the possibilities are endless our lives are finite, fragile and wonderful.  Why waste time looking for something we may never see?  If something can go right, it will.

I’ll finish this post with something else positive.  In my mood the day I wrote the above, not only did I expunge the negative feelings from my psyche, but I learned something new.  Another important lesson ~ Learn something new every day.

Today I learned a little more about me.  What have you learned today?

Sidebar  –

The amazing photo was taken by Aaron Escobar, and can be found on Flickr under a Creative Commons License.  To me the Earth seemed to move the longer I looked at the picture!