A Less Traveled Road

About once a month for about twenty years, my wife and I would get in the car on a Saturday morning and get lost. We would find a road we had never been on, and just go. We wouldn’t look at a map and we would stay off major roads. If something sounded interesting, we’d stop and explore it. It was always challenging and fun.

I ran across this saying from Rumi that is appropriate for those of us living with a progressive disorder. The road that we travel has no roadmap to follow. We discover things about ourselves almost every step of the way. 

The words of power for today are:

I decide how I will live my life

Even though things happen to me that are out of my control, I have this rheostat in my brain that decides how I will perceive and respond to the situation. I can turn it one direction and wallow in my pity, or I can turn it the other direction and make the most of the situation. 

I refuse to be a victim

When I was going through Survival (SERE) School before going to Vietnam, the instructors put us through three weeks of hell. At first, it didn’t seem too difficult, but over time the continued assault on our bodies and mind wore us down. We began to doubt many assumptions. What was initially just a game became very real. 

When we had gone a couple of days without a meal, an instructor told us about this rheostat in our brain. He explained, “This rheostat allows us to perceive things differently.” He pulled a worm from the ground and said, “Can you imagine eating this?” He went on to explain that at some point in our training we are going to be hungry enough to be thankful for having this worm to eat. During the three weeks of survival training, that rheostat changed many perceptions.   

It is no different today. I decide if I want to play the victim card or if I want to rise above the restrictions placed upon my body.

What was, or should be, doesn’t matter in how I live today