A little while ago, I headed out to go out to the desert for the day.
In the middle of the night one night, at 4:30 in the morning, my lovely neighbor, an absolutely charming woman, who never says hello to anybody, got to into a major brawl with her equally charming boyfriend.
At the 4:30 in the morning, her screaming and knocking and pounding at the door, calling him multiple names and other things. You heard the door slamming many times, and you heard screaming and yelling. It’s a wonderful to wake you up from a deep, amazing slumber.
Of course, when you’re woken up at 4:30 in the morning, it takes a couple hours to go back to sleep because when someone’s screaming and yelling, it’s a little disturbing, so you don’t exactly fall back asleep right away.
Anyway, it slowed down my day. It slowed down my day.
I got a much later start than I wanted to, and now, once again, trying to leave west LA as always was nightmare.
The traffic, no matter what day it is, no matter what time it is, this stretch of the 405 was heinous.
Already today, I had to wake up six people at stop lights because they were texting, driving me nuts. When I left my house the first time, I forgot my wallet.
Apparently inside my brain last night, I decided I was going to wear a certain pair of jeans, so I had my wallet in those jeans. Didn’t even think to check for my wallet, because I was spacey from the lousy night’s sleep thanks to my neighbor.
I wanted to get a good night’s sleep because I had to drive. When I drive, I like to be fully alert. I don’t like to feel tired at all because when you drive in southern California, you need to be fully alert.
I had to make a turn around, which added about 25 minutes to my trip that I could’ve avoided.
And then I got back on the road again. I took a few deep breaths and here’s what I realized:
I can’t control life.
I can’t control traffic.
I could’ve controlled me forgetting my wallet, but I couldn’t control my asshole neighbor from screaming and yelling and getting into a fight.
You can’t control anything, really. The only thing you can control is your own action. When you’re driving a car on the freeway, there’s nothing you can do but control your own actions.
When you have a conversation with somebody, you can’t control an outcome. Hello, men.
That’s right. Hi, men! Hi, men who constantly e-mail me questions like…
Well after the opener, what do I say next?
I have no idea, except you need to listen, because if you listen carefully, you’ll know exactly what to say next. You can’t control what they’re going to say. How many times do men say to me, “well if I and go do this to them, what are they going to do?”
I don’t know. If you say something with authority and presence, a woman is going to respond. From there, you need to listen and segue and have a normal conversation.
We can’t control things. We can’t control outcomes. We can’t control anything. If you see someone you’re attracted to, you can’t control what they’re going to feel, you can’t control what they’re going to say.
We can’t control the weather, we can’t control the stock market, we can’t control how our day’s going to go.
But you need to just let it go.
Yeah, I know, that’s a cheesy song from the movie Frozen.
But it’s some really good advice. You need to literally let things go. When you let stuff go, everything happens the way it’s supposed to happen because we have no control over the things in our life, except what we can control. We can’t control another person. We can’t control how they react. We can’t control how someone’s going to drive at a stop light.
We can’t control if someone’s going to be honest, dishonest, or whatever it might be.
We have no control. And that’s the power of really letting it go.
I made my point clear as I’m driving in LA traffic. I thought, I’m just going to enjoy the day. I’m going to enjoy the drive. The drive is a little longer than I thought it was going to be. It was in Palm Springs, somewhere else out there in the desert. first. It was a little longer, maybe 20 minutes.
But it also gave me the opportunity to see another plan, so I breathed into it and realized this is how I was meant to spend my day. It was supposed to be a little longer. It was supposed to be a little further. It was supposed to give me some discovery of some place else.
That’s how you think of life, and that’s how you don’t control things. The beauty of life is not to being able to control anything. Just collide and being part of it.
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Vonnie
Sunday, April 2nd, 2017
Vonnie
Sunday, April 9th, 2017