Whatever you meet unexpectedly, join with meditation

Sometimes, you just don't get the day you thought you were going to get.

Well, more precisely, always, you don't get the day you thought you were going to get. I'd be more than happy to offer a didactic example. Sometime last fall, a tornado passed overhead while I was at the tire dealership having my car serviced first thing in the morning. We live in the mid-atlantic, so this sort of thing makes a great story. I had the satisfying opportunity of calling my boss from my cell phone to say, "I might be a bit later than I thought I would be, as I am at this moment in the middle of a tornado." When I got to work, I was full of stories about how this tornado had passed right over the building, with debris flying by, and the enormous bay door of the service area blown off, and all that. I emailed my dear husband, a weather enthusiast, and had exchanged a couple of emails with him (he, disbelievingly, 'are you sure it was a tornado? I didn't see any report of a tornado') ...

and that was going to be my story, that day. My storyline was all set up. Only, in the full flush of how, unexpectedly, my day had been transformed into 'the day I was caught in a tornado,' my husband phoned me at work to tell me that, finally, his number had come up. On this, the fourth or so round of layoffs in his company that year, his name was one of the ones on the list.
...
So, today I spent all the little odd moments of the day wondering what my first really substantial blog entry was going to be about. And that, of course, was going to be the storyline of the blog entry. But it seems that my dear husband has a sneaky way of running off with the agenda, because yet again I got a phone call at work. Finally we've heard from one of the 6 universities where he's applied for a faculty position, and they're inviting him for an interview. After an indeterminate number of gnawingly uncertain weeks waiting to hear something--please, anything!--that could give me a focus for my anxiety about not knowing where we'll be next fall, we now have one possibility beginning to unfold.

I'm quite aware that, in fact, really nothing in our situation has substantially changed. but frick that. I'm all about flying to pieces, right now. I'm all about wanting to quit my job, this very instant, and spend every waking moment--and most of the ones where I by all sane reasoning oughta be asleep, as well--putting my life in order. Such a shallow phrase: 'putting my life in order.' That would certainly be a switch. I doubt I've had an orderly moment in my entire dust-bunnified life.

Comments

[Jo]

Well, I want to quit my job too, but not so I can put my life in order. I want to stay home, reading unmolested for hours on end. I guess that's a kind of order in itself.

This is exciting stuff -- maybe better than the tornado, even! -- and I as well am eager to hear where my beloved jilbur will go...