A Surprise Gift/Open it up

The Gift

Have you ever known anyone who said: I’m going through the worst time in my life -- I’m so happy! I doubt it, because when tough stuff happens it just hurts and its just stinks. Loss, illness, separation, not fun stuff. But what I have learned and what I want to talk about tonight is how some of the really tough stuff in my life ended up being wake up calls for me to change. And that these wake up calls, if you look at them in another way, are actually gifts. Maybe veiled a bit, maybe not the box of chocolate you wanted from Sprungli, or the new ipad, but another sort of gift.

Because there is one thing I know for sure, and that is stuff happens, and sometimes real crappy and painful stuff happens. The truth is no one walks through life’s doors without having some challenge come their way at some point. So the question is not how to avoid those experiences, because you can’t, but rather, the question is what will your attitude be towards it when it hits. Can you use it as a wake up call, or do you see it as a total pain in the neck and wished it would just go away. Do you allow it to make yourself miserable and angry and resentful and walk around with a poor me face? or do you take it and learn from it and change and deepen. That is the real meaning of free choice. How are you going to choose to react to the tough stuff that comes your way? Because it could bring with it changes in your life you never knew would come like where you live or what you do, and or it could bring with it feelings that you don’t often have.

A good example of this is, I remember some years back having abdominal surgery which made walking around outside really painful and tough, I was so slow, and I remember all of a sudden seeing people who were permanently disabled in wheel chairs and canes, - people I never even looked at before, and all of a sudden I felt so much compassion for them. That compassion and real understanding I never had before to that extent. That was its gift to me, to experience real compassion and understanding when people are vulnerable.

Or, recently my Mom broke her wrist and she told me She has never been happier. I said it has forced you to be more nurturing and self loving and maybe that’s why you feel happier, and she said well why didn’t I feel this way when I broke my elbow last year and I said probably because you didn’t learn to be more nurturing and self loving to yourself, and life just keeps throwing the punches until we wake up and learn the lesson, or experience our life differently

And that is just what happened to me. Years ago, I really wanted to have children. But I instead had miscarriages. I didn’t have one, not two, not but three miscarriages, and it was really very very painful. I cried all the time. But I have to say those miscarriages pushed me into a spiritual life that I probably never would of walked into without them. And so I’ve come to think about them as my wake up calls, but it took 3 hits for me to wake up. It was like, the first one came and boom, and I didn’t change anything, and then life said, oh no, she’s not getting it, lets go for another punch, and boom another miscarriage, and nope, she didn’t make any changes, and then life said, better go for the big bomb, and boom, the third one just propelled me out like I was a cannon ball and pushed me and made me take huge risks and give up my whole way I was living, who I was married to, where I was living, everything changed. Because that is how wake up calls happen, life just keeps giving out the punches until the thing that has to shift shifts. Some people get it faster, and some need a lot of beating.


Why things happen I really don’t know. Why you got that, and she got that, and that happened to this one, and that happened to that one. And this one has this, and that one got that. We really don’t know why.
Sometimes I think we are like an ant walking on a persons arm. The ant doesn’t know its walking on a human arm. It doesn’t say wow this is a nice arm, I think I’ll walk up to the wrist, or I think I’ll hang out on this hair, or I’ll rest on the persons freckle. It’s just unconscious it’s just an ant not really knowing or understanding whats going on. We are like an ant; we don’t really know what is going on. Sometimes I think we are programmed to not know.

But the one thing I do know, is that its not the experience but rather our attitude towards it that matters. Do you allow it to bring you down and feel angry, or do you see it as a potential opportunity. One thing difficult things do bring is a feeling of vulnerability. Maybe vulnerability and the willingness to be in it and to show others that is where we are is the highest state we can be in. Because in that state the heart is so raw and open, so not hidden in its shell of pride and self important.
And so fellow Toastmasters and guests, perhaps the next time you are just living your life, having a cappuccino at Starbucks, driving home, walking into your office, whatever it is, and some difficult thing hits you, hits you hard, perhaps you can look beyond the painful experience and wonder what kind of wake up call is this for you. What is life pushing you to see or to change, where is life pointing you? What kind of human emotion is it bringing to you, compassion, understanding, love, because hidden behind the rotten experience, could be the one thing you needed that will push you to really live who you are. And that friends is a gift.
Leslie Kuster.... (my daughter)