12th
Daily gratitude: Serenity Prayer
I am the kind of crazy control freak who wants everything to be known in advance, planned. I of course like things to go my way, which is perhaps why I react so horribly when other people try to railroad me into making things go their way. Karma will take care of those people though. I realized today while getting ready to use the last few dollars I currently possess, which is mortifying enough to have gotten to this point, to send a fax to try to get the rest I’m owed, that I could be an evil brat and mope and whine about it, or just suck it up, apologize to myself, and focus on earning more money. That brilliant Frank O’Hara line echoed so loudly in my mind: “Once you are helpless, you are free, can you believe that?” Of course it takes a not unnoticed amount of privilege to believe in that. Plenty of people in the world are literally helpless and in no way free. But he was speaking of plane travel and I think that metaphor applies to so many mental challenges, where life feels helpless but there is always a new day, a blank page. Creating doesn’t actually cost anything except time. And as I was searching for some papers I found stray cash, enough to get me to Philadelphia and back next week, a ticket the brand new me will immediately jot down in my 2012 expenses, something foreign yet exciting. It felt like a reward for surrendering to something, or rather, everything, that is beyond my control. And now I will fax and wish and hope, and be prepared for nothing, with a free mind, which is probably the body part I should value even more than my heart.
