Fight life or accept the gifts?

I'm not talking about happiness. Nope. I'm talking about fighting life. Waking up in the morning and feeling the sun, or even the greyness and drinking water and maybe coffee, feeling fabulous and grateful, and then suddenly, it's another one of those days in which you just don't know from which direction you got sucker-punched but you did. How did that happen???

Guess what? It was you. Ooo yeah. 

"No! It was the bank! It's all those pending gasoline fees from that trip to Minnesota! I got gas on my loyalty card whenever I saw a station, just to be safe, and they put a pending charge on my card each time for $125! WTF? I have almost $1000 pending now and I can't buy anything!"

Yup. Spend $10, or $20 - it doesn't matter. In the US, it's perfectly legal now for gas stations to place a hold on your card the moment you slide it, and it stays until it clears with your bank. I know! I too have pending gas charges there from a month ago! 

So we get grumpy. We fight life because it goes against our expectations. Perhaps it was the weather. Maybe it was the mood of others in a meeting or the direction of the stock market. Do we really have control over that? Even if we could have control, is that really where we delegate our time and expertise? What do we change by fretting? We might upset others. We certainly upset ourselves.

What if we think of life as a friend who constantly gives us gifts so we can learn and innovate? After all, that's what life is. Every occurrence has consequences. We can put the circumstance into a place of acceptance, and then the consequence will only be the original consequence. There will be no aftermath of our pissy mood, health issues from our clenched jaw or shoulders, bloating or weight gain from our binge.

We could instead put that occurrence into a place of learning or innovation. What can we learn from what happened? What might we create from what happened that we likely would not have done so had it not? Just the striving to innovate from a place of loss, strife, or pain causes that thing in life to be one of the more enjoyable occurrences, a big twist from how most people go about their life. It's really not that sh** doesn't happen, more that it's an everyday occurrence that is our friendly growth mentor helping us to become just a little better, more resilient, freer, and maybe even wealthier in the long run.

Let's go back to the bank card example. While the pending holds on the card prevail, we can't buy anything. We innovate and watch free movies at home. We read. We don't shop for food but make a fabulous lentil stew with dried lentils, shallots, canned tomato, cumin, a shank of something we have in the freezer, bay leaves... It turns into a romantic evening. There are many to follow. We learn how to bake bread.

We embark upon one night each week to cook from scratch and have a date night at home, and it positively impacts our relationship and our wallet long after the $810 that was not gasoline is returned.

And that is how unfair rulings in favor of petroleum companies and holds on your bank account can put a spring in your step. So I guess this post is about being even happier after all.