People often ask, “When am I going to know what I’m supposed to do with my life?”  For me personally, the question has transformed:  The only way I can know what I should be doing is if I focus on who I should be.  That doesn’t mean there aren’t magnificent things we’re supposed to do, but God can only work for us to the extent that He can work through us.

— Marianne Williamson

How do we figure out what we’re supposed to do in life?  For many of us, we may have just kept moving along doing what seemed to be obvious based on the feedback we were receiving at the time.  For others, perhaps there is a feeling of something that we’re supposed to do.

For me, there has been an ongoing feeling that my mission in life is to help others – through learning as much as I can about how we tick and teaching others whatever they want to learn.  Whether that actually is my mission in life, whether I actually have a mission in life – is still an open question to me.  Marianne Williamson’s idea that perhaps before I can contribute in the way I want to contribute, I must at least consider that I need to change so that I can be of service, opened a new way of thinking for me.

What Should I Do?

I know that we often talk about not being driven by the “shoulds” in our lives, but maybe there are some “shoulds” that we need to heed.  Not the shoulds imposed by others, but rather the shoulds that lead to our personal growth.  And I realize that here I am coming dangerously close to the line.  How do we tell the difference?

Good question!

I think that what we need to learn to ignore are the “shoulds” that make us feel guilty.  The “shoulds” that we need to be able to ignore are the ones that come from not doing everything that other people want us to do.  The ones that we say “I should have…” because we didn’t get around to volunteering on every committee possible at church or to taking the visitors to every place they wanted to see.

Maybe the things that we should do include learning to:

• Judge less
• Be less defensive
• Be more active setting boundaries
• Finding more time for learning the things we’ve never had time for

Back in the ’60s, I think, there was a popular phrase, “Bloom where you’re planted.”  To me, it means, learn to live well in the situation in which you find yourself.

That’s too bad because I’d rather whine, but I think we’re all supposed to find the pony in the pile of manure – wherever we are.

Where the Heck is that Pony?

For several months, I’ve written about not having enough time.  And I don’t have enough time.  But, I’ve reached the conclusion that there is something I need to learn here.  So, what have I learned?

Another good question!

Most of all, I’ve learned that I can cope – up to a certain point.  At that particular point, my body surrenders and gives up.  Then I spend several days feeling physically miserable and resting up enough to go back into the fray.

With this last go round, it seemed as if I not only was given the lesson but I was given a follow up test.  I had to make two decisions which went against the grain for me.  The first was that there was a summer fun day at work and I felt obligated to attend.  The only problem was that it was about an hour from home to play laser tag.  I could barely walk without coughing.  Running around was out of the question.  I called in sick – and felt guilty all day. (Good heavens!  I wasn’t going to get any work done anyway! OY!!!)

The second was when after returning to work (the day after laser tag), I got worse two days later and had to call in sick again.  I was awake until 4:00 a.m. when I needed to get up at 6:00 a.m.  All night long I worried about getting to sleep.  Finally, I drifted off and woke up at 5:30.  Suddenly, it popped into my head.  The lesson that I needed to learn was to take care of myself first, then take care of my responsibilities.  I almost missed that one.  (Guess what, my employer is still in business despite the fact I took another day off.)

In The Age of Miracles, Marianne Williamson writes:

We might skip some lessons at school, but we can’t skip any of the lessons of life.  They will find us.  If a lesson is up for us and we don’t learn it now, then it’s programmed into the universe that we will just have to learn it later.

Whether we believe that God or the universe is determined to teach us what we need to know isn’t important.  What is important is that until we figure out how to deal with them, the same issues keep coming up for us.  Maybe that is God’s way of getting our attention.

The “pony” is that we keep getting the opportunity to learn.  It often doesn’t feel like the good news, but it truly is.  We have short memories.  Often, we need to repeat what we thought we learned.  But when we finally get it down, it’s a truly glorious feeling!

So just keep shoveling… there’s a pony in there somewhere!