Taking the Ride

Taking the Ride

It’s hard to know what’s right and what’s wrong these days. So much is coming out in the news and on the Internet that seems so convincing that either all is lost or all is saved, depending on how you choose to view things. Either way, Ph.D.’s and stalwart economists and political analysts are obviously so confused and conflicted that anyone onboard this “ship” of ours has got to be terrified as to who’s at the helm and what sort of charts are they using to navigate us through the storms ahead.

Having been through some storms of my own that on a personal level make what lies ahead of us not so scary to me, I’m here to say that it’s all part of the journey we’ve all known secretly or otherwise was bound to come. “Life runs in cycles,” a very wise old mentor of mine used to say. “If we would just step back a bit and look at the patterns, we could predict the future pretty accurately.” He was 94 when he passed away with his Daytimer still in hand, and he’d run businesses as big as any that are now in various stages of bankruptcy and collapse. He’d seen it all, through World Wars, recessions and the “Great Depression,” and he said with a smile, “It’s all just an exercise in consciousness…and sometimes it’s better just to ride the horse the direction it’s running.”

Yes, there’s trouble ahead…and some people are going to get hit hard. But it doesn’t have to be all that hard. What my old friend was saying, in essence, was that once you’re moving, stay with it and enjoy the ride as best you can. How you get to the other end is a matter of your choice of attitude. Fight it and resist it, and you only make it harder on yourself. Fight it and resist it to the extreme, and you’ll most likely not ever see what’s on the other end.

At several points in my own ride through life, I’ve been at what appeared to me to be a dead end, but I always managed to take a deep breath and plunge ahead, only to find sensibility and mysteries unveiled. Recently, at one of the worst times in my life, I chose to keep a truly positive (as opposed to faking it) attitude, and the most apparently unlikely person to have any resources with which to help me showed up…and became one of my biggest supporters and newest “best friend.” That’s actually happened to varying degrees many times along the way, and I can tell you unequivocally that it’s worth every trial and every sorrow.

Show up for others in your life, no matter what, and don’t give in to the doomsayers and “analysts,” and your ride will prove memorable…even enjoyable––regardless of what it might look like right now. If enough of us do that, those storms will blow over with a whole lot less damage and destruction, and like the end of the movie, “Titantic,” we’ll all raise our goblets in toast to the ride of our lives.

Don Kirchner
ReturnToHonor.org