Project Happily Ever After

Life is a struggle.

My mother in law gave me this shirt, which says, “life is a struggle, a wonderful struggle” in Finnish, her native language.

I love it, not just because it’s a conversation piece (no one can figure out what it says so people always ask), but because it’s so true and so freeing.

I didn’t always feel this way, of course. Until very recently, I was one of those people who went around muttering things like, “Life shouldn’t be this hard,” and “What did I ever do to deserve this?” and “Is mercury in retrograde AGAIN?!”

But then my Buddhist meditation teacher described life in the following way:

It’s like you are treading water in the middle of the ocean. Everywhere you look, you see water. You tread water your entire life. Then you die. Then you are reincarnated, and you find that, yet again, you are in the middle of the ocean and you are treading water.

I don’t know about you, but that description? It made me say, “Wow, that’s my life. Whenever I feel as if I’m just about to get to the shallow end of the swimming pool, I find that something has shoved me right back into the deep end, and the struggle starts all over again.”

More important, I used to think that everyone else had an easy life—that I was the only person on the planet who was at risk of drowning in the deep end of the swimming pool.

EVERYONE is struggling? EVERYONE is treading water? NO ONE gets off easy? NO ONE has a bright purple floatie? We’re all in this together?

It was a revelation.

And this revelation helps mightily when I have a string of days–as I did last week—during which every single darn tooting thing that can go wrong does. My bad luck streak started the moment we were leaving my in-laws’ house to drive to the Orlando airport. Here’s a rundown of the series of struggles.

• My husband gets a text message letting him know that our flight has been canceled. He calls and manages to get us rebooked on a later flight. He’s the man!
• We attempt to make our way through airport security. They test my husband’s hands for explosive residue, give me the pat down and hand search every single one of our bags. Not only does every single person in the security line get a closer look at my bloomers than I personally would like, the TSA officials even search our 5 year old’s backpack and confiscate her brand new rubber ball that she got at Cape Canaveral. It’s one of those balls that lights up when you bounce it. Apparently it has water inside, not that anyone other than this TSA official could tell. Our daughter cries for the next hour, saying that her life will never be the same without her ball.
• Our seats are not sequential, so my husband gets the luxury of sitting three rows back—by himself—while I’m in a three seat row between a stranger on the aisle and my sniffely whining “I miss my favorite ball” kid in the window seat.
• We land in Washington DC. My husband gets another text message telling him that our connecting flight is canceled. He gets us rerouted on yet another flight that leaves at 10 p.m.
• We learn that we are not technically really on the 10 p.m. flight, even though there are definitely three empty seats, because the flight has a weight limit and they won’t know exactly how many passengers are allowed on the plane until the very last minute. Does, “the plane has a weight limit” sound a wee bit scary to you? It did to me, too.
• The flight is delayed an hour. During this time my daughter complaints of feeling too hot, of her legs hurting, of missing her rubber ball, and of missing her rubber ball. She finally falls asleep.
  

  She misses her ball.

• We are allowed on the plane! Our luck is changing!
• Whoops. Not it’s not. We sit at the gate for an hour+.
• After sitting at the gate for 1.5 hours, the pilot chews out air traffic control. I know this because his mic is on the entire time. We all clap.
• Now it’s been more than 2 hours and we’re still at the gate. The passengers are no longer as enamored with our pilot as they once were. They are yelling things that I really would prefer my 5 year old never, ever hear until she’s, oh, maybe 16 years old.
• We finally leave the gate and wait on line for de-icing. Right around the time that I no longer have sensation in either of my ass cheeks and I am quite certain that I have dangerous blood clots in both of my calves, we take off.
• We land at 3 a.m.
• We get home. We look in our daughter’s new fish tank and discover that an algae colony had taken up residence and one of her fish is dead. Now her life will never be the same without her fish and her rubber ball.
• You might think that a kid who had been up most of the night might sleep in. Not my kid. At 8 a.m., she’s up and so am I.
• I pick up my dog from boarding. They had just clipped his nails. My dog has the dog version of hemophilia. Two of his nails are bleeding, something that I fail to notice until he has raced all over the house. My house now looks as if someone has died a very slow, drawn out, painful death.
• The next day, I fly to Nashville for the Blissdom blogging conference, held at the Gaylord Opryland. If you’ve never been, you should know that the Gaylord Opryland is about the size of Manhattan and Brooklyn added together. No, add Long Island to that, too. My room is at least 5 miles away from the check in area. After lugging all of my crap to my room, I discover that that my key does not open my door. It’s another 5 miles back to check in for a new set of keys. Back at my room, I try the new keys. I’m, still locked out. Maintenance is called to fix my lock. It takes two maintenance men, three different locks, and me getting locked out in the hallway three different times before the door finally works.
• For some reason, every time I order English Breakfast tea at this hotel, I end up with Earl Gray instead.
• The day before I am supposed to go home, a huge snowstorm hits the northeast. Both of my flights are cancelled and a nice lady at US Air tells me that they only possible way for me to get home that Sunday is by tele transport.

I could go on. In fact, I will in my next post. But, at this point, you get the idea.  All told, it’s been a solid week of one little struggle after another. But these struggles haven’t rattled me all that much because I’ve embraced them. I’ve come to expect them as normal operating procedure. I just kept telling myself, “Life is a struggle—a wonderful struggle,” and somehow I am about laugh about it, learn from it, and move on with my wonderful life.

How do you persevere through life’s annoying struggles? Do you think life is a struggle for everyone, or do some people get off easy? Leave a comment.

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