for today....

For today, I will remember, simply, that I am.
I am not sure why things happen to people, good or bad.
Karma, self fulfilling prophecy, bad luck, good luck, angels, demons, good choices, bad choices, hard work, hardly working, destiny, rewards, punishments.
Is it piety that allows rewards? Is it disbelief that holds reward back? How often do we ask "why do bad things happen to good people? Why do good things happen to those undeserving?" Who decides? What are the checks and balances? And who is the karmic tallyman anyhow?
But I have decided that things to not happen TO us. Instead, I think things, good and bad, just happen as we walk our path of life. Predestined? Who knows. But how we perceive events can alter if they really are good or bad, or perhaps, just indifferent.
I have spent a lot of time in my life wondering why things have "happened" to me.
And especially when they are not happy things, it puts me directly on the path of playing the victim.
The last few years I have been trying to think differently, find the good in everything that happens in my life, or in the lives of those I know and love, even when those things really suck.
The last few days I have been tested a little. Allowing the fears and doubts that plague us all from time to time to to gain the upper hand is always a risk, for some more than others, but it happens in all our lives at some point.
But are fears and doubts really totally negative?
Fears and doubts make us think things through a little more, and as long we don't let them take over and just be fears and doubts, perhaps they can be teachers, their own positives not as overtly obvious as the more impetuous happinesses that also occur.
Like the teachers that don't give the easy A, the darker moments have a lesson to teach. The teacher that made you work harder, try a different method, change your thinking process to arrive at an answer we might not have arrived at had it all been candygrams and laughter.
Where am I going with this?
I have no idea.
Just working it out with words I guess.
My daughter's death taught me about love, about scrappiness, about not wasting time fearing the inevitable but embracing the time given and rejoicing we were given it at all.
The youth centre tested my every fibre at times, especially at the end, when people I trusted turned out to be less than worthy of said trust.
But there it is.
If I ignore the lesson, the scrapes and bruises were for naught.
And really, were those scrapes and bruises really all that bad?
Maybe not.
There will be more lessons. More candygrams as well as more bitter moments.
But in the end, when I tally my own philosophical books, I think things will tip in a positive balance. Just enough sweet, not too much sour, and plenty riches, the kind that don't show up in your bank account.