Muddling Through

I stumbled across these thoughts by Tom McMahon and found them very touching. Read through them and I'm sure you'll agree:

It was 15 years ago today that our 8-year-old son Ryan suffered a severe brain injury that left him unable to walk or talk or feed himself. He was in the hospital (in two hospitals, actually) for over six months, and ever since has lived with us at home. I thought I would share some of the lessons I've learned in these past 15 years:

Muddle through
I've never seen a self-help book with this advice, but really it's some of the best advice I can give somebody going through a difficult stretch. Sometimes the absolute best you can do isn't that pretty, or elegant, or graceful, or frankly all that inspiring. When you're in one of those stretches, stop worrying about it. Nobody else could do that much better in your position either.

Some doors close, some doors open
I've had one vacation away from home in the past 15 years, not counting the summer I had off when I had my heart surgery. Since I couldn't get away, I started this blog. SeewhatImean?

People are such wusses to-day
Take that last item. Some folks would be horrified not to take an airplane trip vacation at least twice a year. While that's very nice, it's not a Minimum Daily Requirement for a Happy Life. People re-define extravagant luxuries as the bare necessities of life, and whine like a two-year-old when they don't have every last one of them. Keep the two categories straight and you'll be much happier.

You gotta play out the season
Every year baseball teams start spring training with visions of the World Series in their heads. And every year about May or June it's obvious to several of those teams that it ain't gonna happen. But they still play out the season. Your Big Lifetime Dream smashed to bits? You still gotta play out the season. Try to set the base-stealing record, or the record for triples, or the record for pinch-hit singles with two men out and runners in scoring position. Find the game within the Game, and play that.

Let us brace ourselves to do our duty
From Winston Churhill, it's my favorite sound bit from Charlie Sykes. It sounds a bit odd to our Modern Ear, but whose fault is that?

Let people help you
Gals, you don't have to remove your own gall bladders. Guys, you don't have to perform your own vasectomies. Being self-sufficient means being self-sufficient overall, not all the time. Let people help you when you need it.

You never anticipate the really bad stuff
Think of all the old Twilight Zone episodes that had a post-World War III theme. Now think of all the episodes with a big-jetliner-smashing-into-a-skyscraper theme. We tend to worry about a lot of things that never happen, and let ourselves get blindsided by reality.

If all you look for is the bad and ugly, you'll never see the good
If you search for The Stupid, you'll find The Stupid. If you search for The Worthwhile, you'll find The Worthwhile. If you don't get that, then it means that I've found The Stupid while looking for The Worthwhile. But you're The Exception, Bucko.

Hattip to the evangelical outpost.