Fortune for the day – “Luck never made a person wise.” – Seneca
My friend’s husband made a wonderful, easy to visualize analogy the other day. He said that this is one of those times of the year that many of us start to feel like bait fish, with a thousand little have-tos, annoyances, self-created problems and projects, appointments, trips to plan, work issues, tax issues, health issues, house issues etc. etc. nibbling at us, tearing us apart, one teeny bite at a time. If you look at those poor bait fish in the picture above, they certainly aren’t faring that well, at all. I suppose the same could be said about us, when we let our lives swim out of control.
Similarly, I once read that if you dream that you have little bugs crawling all around you or on you, you are having one of those bait fish moments, in your life. (or if it’s a really lucid dream, check your bed closely, for bed bugs) These types of dreams signify that you probably have too many things on your mind, too many things coming at you from every direction possible, and your subconscious is trying to get your attention to simplify, using a dramatic, disturbing, creepy, crawly bug dream to wake you up to your living reality that is currently just too much to handle, right now, for you.
Peter McWilliams said this, “You can have anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want . . .. . Living on this planet has some down-to-earth limitations. First we can put our body in only one place at a time. Second there are only 24 hours a day, 365 (or 366) days per year. Third, the human lifetime is only so long (150 years seems to be tops). . . . The limitations become even more severe when we consider the time we spend on maintenance: sleeping, washing, eating – and some of us even have to make money to pay for all of that.”
He also said this, “You can have anything you want. Pick what you want most and if it’s available, if it doesn’t already belong to someone else (who wants to keep it) – you can have it. . . . The catch? The more unobtainable the “want” you want, the more you must sacrifice to get it. It’s not that you can’t have it, it’s that you’ll have to give up many and maybe all other things.”
I am seeing this phenomenon happening with my middle son right now. He aspires to go to medical school. He is a junior in college. He is trying to balance keeping his grades up, studying for the MCAT, making money being a teaching assistant, keeping a healthy relationship with his girlfriend, and still trying to stay physically robust and strong. He lamented to me recently that this has been his least favorite semester in college. He has had to forgo almost all of his social life with his fraternity and unlike most of his friends, he is coming home for his spring break, to focus entirely on studying for the MCAT, the test that largely determines, if and where, you will attend medical school. There are no guarantees, at this point. My son and I talked about how his dreams and his future are worth this sacrifice, as hard as it is to “miss out” right now.
As McWilliams states, “At a certain point in most everyone’s life – rich, poor, organized, or scattered – the wants outnumber the available hours in the day. At that point, a want must go a-wanting. . . . The solution is preventative: choose carefully at the outset. Be grateful that, although you can’t have everything, some very nice anythings await your selection.”
Perhaps if you are feeling “buggy” or “bait fishy” right now, it is time to become more selective and choosy as to where you are putting your time and your energy. There is always time for brief pauses to breathe, to reflect, to let go, and to reset. If you don’t take those pauses for yourself, those pauses of consideration, those pauses that are making sure that you are living your priorities, then sometimes major pauses, will be forced upon you, by a worn out body, or a neglected partner, or a frustrated boss, or a mental breakdown, etc. etc. Be a healthy fish. Swim in clearer water, with a vision of what you want your place in the pond to look like – the place that is perfect for you. Let go of the rest.
