The High Road

Life is a bowl of cherries, right? Well, not always. In fact, rarely. Let’s face it, often life is just one catastrophe after another. Large or small, it’s always something isn’t it? Whether it’s the car breaking down, a letter from the IRS or your new teflon pan melting on the range, it’s always something.

My mother used to say that hard times build character. I suppose that’s a philosophical way of saying that life sucks and you have to make the best of it. Perhaps. There is also that old chesnut of taking the high road. Killing people with kindness and so forth. But it’s not easy, is it?

Especially when people you trust and you care for, betray you. When everything you believe about someone turns out not to be true. Or that the truth you thought existed doesn’t. What confusion you can feel when that happens. What betrayal. It can be downright disorienting. It can make you feel like you are in an elevator doing a free fall from the 30th floor. And often, you can feel completely justified in being bitter and resentful about it. You can feel sorry for yourself for the injustice and unfairness.

But here’s the thing – that doesn’t get you anywhere. It doesn’t make you feel better. It doesn’t enhance your life. It doesn’t improve one damn thing. In fact, it just makes you feel helpless and unable to cope. It traps you into an endless cycle of fear, resentment and frustration. Believe me, I know.

Hard as it may be, the best solution I’ve found is to take the high road. To just decide that it doesn’t matter what others have done to you, what life has handed out to you – but what does matter is what you do about it. How you carry on and continue to make a life for yourself. Things, people, situations, all pass eventually. What you can do nothing to change has to become irrelevant in your mind. You have to let it go and move on. Take the high road, as they say. You never know – you might find something wonderful there, if you do.

WC