Smoothing The Wrinkles of Yesterday

I just finished making the bed.  As I was removing the old sheets and smoothing the freshly washed ones across the mattress I thought of the importance of freshening life up by airing it out and making a clean change, taking a fresh look.

So many effects come together to hold us in the same place from day to day keeping us from airing ourselves out, opening up our hearts.  When closed to new possibilities, our hearts, thoughts, and goals get as musty and wrinkled as an unmade bed.  We sleep, toss, turn and dribble in the same beliefs from day to day, year to year.  Without shaking things up and letting the breeze blow through, we wallow in the sameness; even our dreams become stale.  If we don’t take a look at the frayed trim we can’t fix it.  At this point in my life, I am attempting to strengthen my frayed edges and not let my dreams become stale.

The expression, “you’ve made your bed, now lie in it”, is really very true.  We all have to accept the consequences of our choices, actions, decisions, and thoughts.  One particular turn years ago may have had unforeseen consequences.  Sometimes, merely cleaning up cannot erase some actions – the results may be irreversible.  But, even in those circumstances, we can air what has been done and resolve to not do the same thing again.  We can speak to people we may have hurt, hug people we love, and comfort people in pain.  We can listen with more than our ears and feel with more than our fingertips.

Due to circumstances beyond my control in 2009 (an owner of a company putting corporate profits into drugs and draining the company dry) I was left unemployed at a time when the economy was not the best.  That particular action put me to bed with the necessity of forging a fresh start.  Although I was earning a very nice living at my prior position, I never enjoyed the work, only the people I worked with.  I rarely felt as though I was contributing anything positive to the world through my work there.  (I did feel positive at my prior company where I thoroughly enjoyed the work AND the people, what a blessing that was.)  The fact that I did it every workday shows that I had my price, something I am not particularly proud of.

However, being forced away from all that handed me a golden opportunity.  I was involuntarily pushed to air myself out and take a fresh look at my surroundings.  It could be stated that I was thrown out of bed.  After landing on the floor, I pulled off the old sheets and took a long look at the decades old mattress.  Like life, it wasn’t a bed of roses that stared back at me.  After a long look I could see beyond the tattered covering and feel a healthy strength of support, something we all desperately need at one time or another.  People who believe they don’t need any support should try sleeping without a mattress once in awhile – truth hurts.

Life happens, but dreams happen, too, even when those dreams fall into ruts.  We need to harness our dreams and use them to create positive, productive changes before they grow stale.  Just as flipping a mattress erases the grooves that have become traps you fall into, sometimes life needs to be flipped to get you on a fresh path that will lead you to a new beautiful destination.

Many of us have a comfy bed – and we should enjoy it, but just think how much better that bed will feel after spending part of the day helping those who may have fallen onto a bed of nails.  Helping others, offering a smile to someone who is down or needs assistance, can cultivate your own pleasant dreams and beautiful future.  Smiling is contagious, and that is one contagion we should try to catch and pass along.  It may even keep us from “waking up on the wrong side of the bed”, which is never a happy experience for yourself or anyone you come in contact with during the day.

When I make my bed in the morning now, I will be thinking about what qualities I want to tuck in safely and which ones I want to wash away.  There are only so many nights we all get to sleep on this side.  If I can keep the finite nature of life in mind, like the life of a good mattress, I will keep my dreams vibrant, my backbone strong, and my life fresh and new.   

Lovely pillows and soft sheets are wonderful and help make a bed beautiful, just as lovely thoughts and kind words can make your world beautiful.  Using them all well and often will hopefully keep us all safely, happily tucked in and enable us to share a world full of ever changing possibility.

Non-Stop Laughing!!!!

It’s the first day of my new job.  It's important to make a good first impression since my daughter found this position for me.  What is the job you ask?  Well, I now work for a gaming company.  My main responsibility is to supply the verbal reactions when someone beats a level.  Funny job, but it pays extremely well. My honest reactions to victory are captured for the audio in order for the game to sound real while it is being played.  Apparently, this is quite necessary for the monetary success of the game!

Anyway, in order to have an authentic reaction, I need to actually play the level and beat it.  To do this, I must pick the one picture out of five given that a majority of people polled found to be the funniest of all the pictures.  Truly, that is the entire game!  On the first try, five pictures appear on my screen.  I pick the one I find to be the funniest.  It is not the right one and I lose the level.  A sad two notes play, doo doo.  A disappointed little bird character appears.  I must try again.

This goes on for about four tries.  On the fifth try, five new pictures appear on my screen.  The one I find funniest is a picture of a man dressed in a moose costume.  He is doing an extremely silly dance, every part of his body moving in crazy ways, fingers pointing up, head dashing from side to side!  The headpiece is the only part of the moose costume that is not complete; instead the head of an old high school friend on mine, who I haven’t seen in years, appears! Apparently, not only do I find this hysterical, but also everyone polled found it so, too.  It is the right picture.  I am laughing and laughing and laughing…and I am relieved I have finally beaten the level!  No sad bird appearing now!!

At this point, I wake up.  Yes, this entire scenario has been a dream!  There is only one problem, (assuming you don't find the weirdness of the dream alarming in itself) I find I am still laughing hysterically!  I try to cover my mouth so I don’t wake my husband, but I am vibrating so hard from my laughter that he wakes up anyway; he is confused.  With a bit of fear in his voice, he quietly asks, “What in the world are you doing?”  Well, his question makes me laugh harder!  Tears are streaming down my face.  The more I think about how ridiculous this whole picture is, the more I laugh!  The more I laugh, the more I laugh and all that makes me laugh more!! 

I can’t stop laughing!!  I go into the bathroom to put water on my face and try to calm down.  Looking at myself in the mirror, with my hair askew and my eyes puffy from tears…I laugh some more!  I try to gain control, but it is useless.  Leaning on the counter, with my head in my hands, I just keep laughing!  I look at the clock, I’ve been up, laughing, for 25 minutes!

Finally, I gain control and slowly, quietly walk back to bed.  I sneak under the covers.  Just as I close my eyes, my husband pokes his head up and asks again what made me so hysterical?  That’s all he needed to do, the laughter takes control again, and I am lost in a vibrating heap of giggles, tears streaming down my face, wetting my pillow.  

I don’t know if this has happened to anyone else, and being that I am in my early 50’s and this is the first time it has happened to me, I honestly believe it is not all that common.  At this point, I was afraid to look it up on the Internet; it would probably say I have some dreaded disease.

I had forgotten all about this episode of hysterical laughing until last night.  Last night, it happened again!!  This time, I don’t remember the whole story of the dream as clearly as I did the first time.  I only remember that once again it was my daughter who was in the dream with me.  She handed me something flat, about an inch long, something that looked like it fell off a tree branch.  While handing it to me, she made what was apparently a hysterically funny remark.  Whatever it was she said in the dream made me belly laugh.  Once again, as it did two months ago, this laughing carried over to the point where I woke up with the vibrating, guffawing that just couldn’t be stopped!  I think I’m going crazy…either that, or the crazy hormones of a mid-life woman are kicking in and instead of hot flashes and night sweats, I get laughter!

Well, I just gave in and looked it up on the Internet…apparently; it’s not all that uncommon!  Relief!  Perhaps it’s just a way to let anxiety out, or perhaps it is hormonal…but, in any case, at least it didn’t say I had some rare lunatic disease only found in short, middle-aged women with curly hair!

Every time I think about my husband’s reactions and the visual of my face in the bathroom mirror, I laugh again!  I certainly do hope laughter is the best medicine!  If so, perhaps I’m cured! ~