too good to be true?

Things in my life have been going very smoothly lately.

I'm a firm believer that we make our own luck, and as a part of that, our reactions to events in our lives dictate greatly our overall way of being. If you're naturally negative, even the smallest disturbance can turn a whole day sour, and a bunch of sour days can lead to a depression. While if you're positive, it takes something huge to upset your day, and even the largest of events can still only affect you as much as you let it. So I try very hard to be a positive person, not sweating the small stuff and such. It doesn't always work. I am human.

This is a new revelation for me, relatively new anyway, contained to the last couple of years. So perhaps this new way of thinking and being has me confused, because it seems to me as if nothing "bad" has happened lately. Oh, there have been small things, like complaining clients, slight sicknesses, traffic congestion, etc.-- the kinds of things that a lot of people let affect their mood too much. (Road rage? Really? Just put in a good cd. Problem solved.) Maybe because I'm not letting these small things affect me anymore I feel as if it's eerily quiet around here. 

I've struggled in my life. That sounds so cliche-- who hasn't? Lately, though, I'm content: job, husband, family, health, finances... it's all going so well. Which makes me think (old me, the me that would focus on how wrong and sad and screwed-up the world is) that this is just the calm before the storm, the build-up to the let-down.

As I mentioned in my previous post, my neighbor is dying. I can't help but think, what did he do to deserve that? What did his precious family do? Nothing. I suppose bad things just happen. How can they just happen, though, how can you be floating along, white sails facing the sun, and then bam your husband is seriously ill and bam he's dead, you're alone, with four boys under age ten. 

As solid as I am sometimes, something like that would ruin me. I feel it, I know it would. I can't lose my husband or my parents. I value my positivity because I know no matter what happens, I'm still me and I'm still ok... that is until I think about the worst thing that could happen. Me includes the three of them because I'm not me without them, Ok means having them in my life on a daily basis. How are humans capable of understanding and negotiating that much grief without completely crumbling under the weight of it, like a sandcastle at high tide?

But that's a worst-case scenario, and that's old me thinking about all the bad things that could happen instead of focusing on what actually is happening. I guess that's the trick, live it up while you can, absorb all the good and joy into yourself, like water into a sea sponge, while it's here and you've got your fingers wrapped around it.

That makes me want to go wrap my fingers and my arms around that husband of mine. It's almost five o'clock, isn't it?