Chris Herrington decided years ago that his reality was much more fun…
and he’s ready to tell you why.
Sit back and relax.
It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Often times when we have a bad day, a series of poor relationships, overwhelming events, or messed up moments, we wonder why we should even bother to get out of bed in the morning. It might feel like it would be easier to just stay in bed and not bother to get up because it just seems like one of those days that if anything else can go wrong, it will. What is the point of getting out of bed to face a world where everything is going crazy and the chances are that you are going to get squashed like a bug no matter what you do?
Why does there need to be a point? What if there is no point and no matter what we do it simply makes a mess? So what? Aren’t we really just saying, “If it is not going to go according to my predictions of what it should look like then I am not going to play this game”? Does that sound any more sensible to you? What if everything we do is just a slow descent as we fall headlong into a bottomless pit? Oh, well, I feel better about it all already!
Seriously, what if this is the “how it goes,” “the what’s up,” the best that it gets? We could just ball up and stay in bed, or we could make an effort to change our lives. We could just ball up and stay in bed, or we could make an effort to change our lives. After all, it is just as mathematically impossible that everything will go wrong as it is that everything will go absolutely right. Instead of feeling helpless, I could just as well seek to alleviate my pain, work on my health, lessen my load, create a more loving world, and increase the chances that things will go better in the future for myself and others.
In fact, no matter what else may happen, when we are finished living, we are going to die. “How are we going to live?” then, until we die, that is the real question. This is what free will is all about. It’s your life; live it any way you want to live it. Selfish, mean, controlling, or angry and hateful? Loving, joyful, healthy, or open-minded? It could go any way you want it to go.
In order to change things from what they were to what you want them to be, all you have to do is to get out of bed and start making the changes you want to see happen happen. This might sound like a huge and very abstract concept. If I want the world to be more loving, do I just stand on the street corner and yell at everyone to be more loving? One more nut! That’s fair enough. The question still remains, “If you don’t do something, will the pain get worse, will the problem go away, or will the situation get better?
So, the real reason we get up is that we have a hope of making things better. We have the hope of further enjoyment. We intend to take a shot at making things go a little bit more our way. This means that we have to make an effort to increase efficiency, decrease pain, or meet certain needs. In short, we get out of bed to see if we can improve on our previous days and to capitalize on and re-live those days that provided us with some enjoyment.
We have hope. We hope it will go better. We hope it will go as well as it has gone and as well as can be expected. We hope it will improve. We have some hope. The question continues with the thought of what we will do to help nudge things along.
If we do nothing, then our hope is one of luck and happenstance. And who wants to be at the mercy of luck or the good will of others? I am not incapable of asking for help. Of course, being in need of help is not the position I am working hard to be in. Being desperate and constantly behind the 8 ball is not my idea of being in the best possible position.
Having to lean on others because I can’t do for myself is humbling at best, but, at worst, it is humiliating. This is more than not having money to buy something that you want. This is the feeling of not being able to provide for yourself the basic needs that give us the feeling that we are safe, secure, and valuable to ourselves. We need our health, a place to sleep, privacy, and basic goods and services. To be without the basics is to be under the stress of needing to depend on others.
And if we can’t do for ourselves, then with the help we receive almost always comes a set of strings attached to the assistance we get. We make our business other people’s business by our not being able to handle our business ourselves. If you don’t own your stuff, it is not your stuff. Coat, hat, car, house, food, basics, the works.
Beyond that, there is a higher level order to get to. If you can’t help yourself, you can’t help anyone else. “You can’t help me; you can’t even help yourself.” “A drowning man can offer no aid. Lastly, even if we are down and out, there is always the possibility that we can at least offer someone our personal wisdom. In order to be able to do even this least little bit, we need to have been able to learn from what we ourselves have experienced and have done the work it takes to be able to acknowledge and understand what we have learned. But we can only say that it is worth taking if we ourselves are willing to take it.
But, what would you tell someone who is lying in bed, incapable of facing the world, shattered and broken hearted? “You can’t accomplish anything in bed, Friend.” “Start small and work your way through it.” “If you lose something, clean up until you find it.” “Set a goal of increasing your capacity by one percent per day, and after 3 months you will have re-invented yourself.” When you have the feeling that today is not your day, it’s okay to lay out a day, but if you think that hiding in bed is going to solve it, you have another thing coming.
You have every reason in the world to get out of bed and start from scratch. And the number one reason that you have to get up and start again is that until you do you will have changed nothing at all, because until you get up and get moving you will stay exactly the same. We started out this message with the thought that lying in bed is problematic because it does not really change anything. Hiding in bed is in fact hiding from how things are. What was the point of going to bed in the first place? Wasn’t it because you felt that you couldn’t change things? And isn’t that what got you into this mess in the first place? I’m just talking to myself. Get out of bed!
runningturtle87
Having completed 32 years of public school service, Chris Herrington lives, with his wife, in Appleby, Texas, and his writing consists of blogging and essay writing concerning an array of topics including education, mediation, self-development, and human interests. He teaches at the Martin School of Choice, plays racquetball, and enjoys his job.
Chris Herrington can be reached at herrington@everythingnac.com
