I’m going to get perilously close to an attitude I despise, detest and avoid (can you tell I don’t like it?): blaming the victim. Stay tuned, because that’s not the point.
Are you putting up with a whole lot of poop in your life these days? Is it sticking to the soles of your shoes on the way into the house? Have you taken to wearing boots? Are you now dabbing fragrance on your upper lip because it’s really piling up?
Why do you allow life to treat you that way?
Okay, I totally get that there are circumstances beyond your control (I’ll get to those). And I applaud your adaptive behaviour so that the impact of the scheisse is less personally damaging. But really, why are you putting up with that shit?
There are a lot of places in our lives where we’re used to taking the lemons we’ve been given and turning them into slices for Long Island Iced Tea. Or lemonade, if, like me, you can drink just fine, but the recovery time’s not worth it.
If you’re living a cliché, you know you’ve swallowed society’s voice whole hog. Meaning, the squealing is drowning out your own whisper.
What if you start throwing the lemons back? Swing a bat to send them flying. Hell, get all Sharknado on them and use a chain saw. (Pop culture just cracks me up sometimes.) Too much of a scene? In the world according to who? The squealing hog?
And what about those places where you don’t get any say in how life treats you? When circumstances are out of your control, you know it’s only you who gets any say about your attitude. Where is there room for a productive, “you are NOT treating me that way” approach?
So, you’re stuck with those lemons. Or sharks. Or chainsaws. It’s not what you wanted, but what can you do with it? No need to get all Pollyanna. Or superhero/ine. In fact, see last month.
Promote yourself to co-director. At the very least, even in your worst nightmare scenario, there’s always a strawberry. Question whether you really have to put up with all that shit and find the ways that life can treat you better.
I think I just found another blessing for people I don’t really want to bless: “May you never be stuck between two hungry tigers.”